House Catch Up

I think the last time I blogged about our house, we were in the process of selling our house and deciding on where to build/buy.

Well, thankfully, after a few hiccups and headaches along the way, we successfully closed on our old house without too much of a headache.  At the end of the day we were just relieved.  I think for most of the time when our house was under contract we were so fearful that the offer would fall through and we would be left without a buyer.  Especially, given that (a) the buyer had threatened to back out on day 5 of the option period and (b) we'd already put down money and signed on a new house.  But on October 30, 2013, we handed over our keys, signed over the paper and were officially done with our first home.

I think we both cried.  A lot.  At least more than we expected.  Here is the last picture I snapped as we drove away the night before closing.

But it was and continues to the be the best decision for our family.  Long. term . Short term too.  We just will be counting our pennies a little closer for the next few months and years.

So now onto the new house, at the end of the day, we decided to build new.  Knowing that we were trying for Baby # 2, we were fearful of purchasing any house that needed renovations.  Something about living in a project zone, trying to make decisions, get things done, etc. did not sit well with me.  Especially, since any of the houses that fit our needs in terms of location, neighborhood, square footage, yard, etc. were already at or near the top our budget without any of the renovations that we'd need, okay want, to do once we moved in.  Thus, we focused on new builds.

Sadly, most of them were out of our price range.  And we quickly realized that to move into the town that we wanted to, we were going to have to make some compromises.  The one compromise we couldn't make was neighborhood.  During this process, it became abundantly clear to us that so much of our lifestyle revolved around the ability to walk our kid(s) to the park, go on long, evening runs with Wrigley, and hang out regularly with our neighbors, who would eventually become the equivalent of family. The second compromise we couldn't make was the number of rooms.  At a minimum, we knew that we needed 4 bedrooms, a playroom, and a study.  We were able however, to be a little flexible with some of the other rooms that we initially thought we needed: a fifth bedroom, a media room, etc.

So the search continued.  And one day, I re-stumbled upon a neighborhood that we had previously looked at but had ruled out for various reasons, namely that we were under the impression that the only houses we could afford were on patio-style lots and/or were way over our budget.  The neighborhood had everything that we could possible dream of -- a community pool, green space, running trails, playgrounds, and 400+ homes...if only it fit our must haves...

However, after a few emails with the builder's rep, I quickly realized that this builder's smaller lots were 65X110 and in our range!  Although this wasn't the ideal lot for us, it was bigger than our previous lot and would still afford us to have enough green space for a the kid(s) and dog.  So we spent much of the next week negotiating on this house:

We were going to make a few structural changes (i.e. move the laundry room into part of the tandem garage and convert the existing laundry room into a walk in pantry), but otherwise, we were pretty sold.  And ready to sign on the dotted line.

Until our realtor suggested that we check out an existing spec home on the estate lots.  We obliged even though we were convinced that these homes and lots were well beyond anything that we could afford.  And we were right.  At least in terms of the spec home.  The builder would have had to come down over $150k to make it doable for us.  However, while inquiring about the spec, we did realize that for not much more than our fully upgraded and customized home, we could afford to build a similar home on the much larger lot (105x155)

So we started negotiating again.  And again, we were faced with some compromise -- the smaller lot with more upgrades, or the larger lot with less upgrades, but at the end of the day, it was a relatively easy decision.  We could always upgrade the finishes, however, we could not upgrade the lot and layout without packing up all of our belongings and moving again.  And so, the decision was made.  Our new house will look like this:

And was scheduled to be ready in April 2014.  Note, I say was scheduled.  We are currently being told end-of May 2014, which is ideal.  Anything later and we'll probably see if the builder will wait.  We'll have more info this Friday as we have the kick off meeting with the builder. I'll post some progress pics next week, but in the meantime, here is our lot with the SOLD sign:

Can't wait to move H.O.M.E!!