Go or Get Off the Pot!

If you follow this blog, you'll know that I've spent a lot of effort thinking about building a new house. It should be clear that I've wanted to do this for a long time. (I would say it dates back to high school when I was in my home-building trade class.) If you do follow this blog then you'll know that a little over a year ago I was turned away from doing an owner-build. Now I'm focusing on building a house with the help of a contractor.

We debated whether it would be better to sell our current house first or begin construction first. It's really a no-brainer, though. We need the liquid equity up-front to buy and develop land and there is no risk of the first house not selling when we need it to. Since we're a foster family, this option was complicated by the need to have a home license for foster care. We soon found out that it wasn't really that big of a deal.

Pretty soon we had one of those "What are we waiting for?" realizations where it occurred to us that the only thing standing in the way was our own reservations. You know what they say, if you're not going to go, then get off the pot.

In early November we met with a realtor that we had met in April. We did a pre-listing walkthrough and set a target listing date. Then it was three weeks of a flurry of activity. We moved a lot of stuff to a storage unit, cleaned up, cleared out, and did repairs that have been on the honey-do list for years. (Literally.)

So we marked November 30 to list and we made it. Just barely. That weekend I took the boys camping in the trailer so we didn't have to keep the house clean. Between Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we had eight showings which produced some good offers, one of which we accepted Monday night. Not bad. The camping trip was great. Me and my boys hunkered down in the trailer, eating snacks and watching movies. Good times.

So the deal is progressing and we're likely to be moving out within 2-3 weeks into a rental house. We still don't know where we're going. We're strangely unstressed about it since it seems like we have options. It looks like the rent will be more than we're paying for mortgage, but I'm OK with that since I'll be spending nothing on home improvement. It's been a looooong time since I've spent nothing on home improvement. I'm looking forward to it. This year I bought a roof, exterior paint, raingutters, and lots of random stuff. I hope to put all my eggs into this home-build basket.

Wish us luck.