Home Sweet Home {for sale} …Part One

{This is one of those “I have to tell you THAT so I can tell you THIS” rambling stories. Hang in there.}

At the end of May, our renters moved out of our Elsmere house. There was some drama that weekend, but the short version of the tale is that they did eventually move out, we found lots of great workers to paint, install new flooring, handle little handyman tasks, and clean the place, and then we listed it for sale at the end of June.

The same morning we drove up to Elsmere to get our keys back, Chris was reading the newspaper in our Owensboro kitchen.  Ever since we moved here, I’ve had a Saturday morning tradition of reading the Real Estate feature insert with a cup of coffee and browsing the ‘larger’ listings. Our plan has always been to stay in this house until about 2015, and then move up to a bigger place; I wasn’t looking with deep intent, but I love looking at homes! I had glanced through the paper that day, but since I had our Elsmere trip on my mind, hadn’t opened up the MLS website or put my usual amount of interest to work. Chris, however, grabbed the laptop and did a search on the MLS site.

Up popped a 6 bedroom, 5 bath, 1927  Craftsman/farmhouse style home on a coveted street in town. Sitting on two generous lots, with a saltwater swimming pool and three-car detached garage, this house listing blew him away. He spent the entire drive to Elsmere talking about the yellow house. He called our realtor to get the “inside scoop” and ran mortgage calculators on his phone.

The next day, Chris was on call – and there was an Open House. In between consults at the hospital, he drove over to the house and walked through with the listing agent. He came home REALLY excited, and spent the next several days making appointments with bankers and finding out what kind of loan we could get. He asked me to make an appointment with our realtor, so I could see the home too.

Long story made longer: it’s a gorgeous home and I loved it. I’ve always loved old homes, I’ve always had a weakness for yellow houses, and the basement alone on this house is the size of the home we currently live in. WHat!?! But I was hesitant.  The pool, while a lovely feature for adult people, is a drowning hazard particularly for children under age 8, statistically speaking. (And we have three children 8 and under, remember? One of whom is particularly noted for a lack of inhibition and a certain flair for disregarding boundaries. Ahem.) The utility bills for the home, quite frankly, scared the bejeebers out of me. They were about as costly as the mortgage on our Elsmere house. Yowza! And there’s the consideration for ongoing maintenance issues if one buys a home built in 1927.

A few weeks went by, wherein we continued to debate the merits of the yellow house, but we began to reach a consensus that even though it was beautiful, it was not The House For Us. Another Saturday morning rolled around, and with nothing to do, we decided to drive around a bit. Lo and behold, it was the Parade of Homes weekend!

The local home builders’ association puts these on twice a year, showcasing their latest and greatest feats of construction. We decided on a whim to walk through a lovely, large home in a neighborhood where a couple of Chris’ colleagues live. Halfway through the first floor, we learned that the home belonged to the hospital CEO. It was show-stoppingly beautiful. Martin Custom Building had done an incredible job. The next day, Chris went by himself to see another stop on the Parade – another Martin-built home. This one belonged to his friend Rico, and Chris was able to chat with Rico about the building process.

He came home ECSTATIC. He had a map of lots for sale in a new development – one he particularly liked was circled. The next week, he made appointments to meet with bankers about the loan process for new construction. He had conversations with designers who work for Martin, conversations with people around town who had built with Martin over the last few years. He was super-thrilled…. until a meeting at the bank took the wind out of his sails. (It ended up being a miscommunication, but he came away from the meeting with the impression that we really couldn’t afford to build a home. The reality is closer to: we could afford a land loan now, but we couldn’t start home construction until the land was ours outright.)

We had a long, serious conversation.

I suggested that perhaps we should go see the available 5-bedroom listings in town. If we liked any of them, we could move forward with listing this house and getting a home loan (which the bankers were practically throwing at Chris!) and moving “up” in house now.

And if none of them fit our dream, then we could decide to commit to building, even though it would probably be a three-year project. (We estimate that we’d need about 24 months to pay off our land, and then allow 8-10 months from the start of construction until move-in.)

So, we called our agent.