This is a big long story and I should have been writing it little by little this last year. But I was kind of stressed out and busy and I was waiting for an end. But it hasn't ended yet. And I all of the sudden have the motivation to sit down and write about it and it is a long story, so beware. It is mostly a lot of little stories all tied together over the last year, so this might be kind of choppy, just bare with me.
In February 2012 we got the feeling that maybe we should think about moving. The interest rates were at historic lows and prices were still great. We figured we could get into something and stay in it for a long time. There were several things we really wanted in our "dream home" that we always thought we would never be able to afford. But with interest rates so low we thought we actual could get those things: a 3rd car garage, a bigger yard, a mud room for all the kids shoes and backpacks and stuff, rambler style with all the important stuff on the main level, so there is only one set of stairs. We looked around a little bit and didn't find anything we loved. We went on a walk one day and walked past this beautiful lot. And all of the sudden we wanted to build. I had never really wanted to build because it is a lot of work and it is a better deal to get something that is finished. But I really liked this lot. I looked into who the owner was and went and knocked on their door. The owners were Roger and Cindy Anthony. I asked if he was willing to sell us his lot and he answered, "I wasn't planning on it, but if Heavenly Father wants you to have our lot, we will sell it to you, it is all Father's property anyway."
Over the next month we put our house on the market, showed it 20 times which was exhausting with three little kids. Trying to get the home ready for showing was so much work. We got an offer in 3 weeks. We chose a builder after interviewing and getting bids from about 10 of them. We chose Doug Degelback with DGD builders. I spent endless hours working on our house plan on graph paper before taking it to the architect and then spent endless more hours. I was up all night some nights trying to figure it out. It was very distracting and a lot of fun. Working with an architect is kind of a pain because they don't quite see your vision like you do. But we finished the plans and we were pretty happy with them.
In the meantime we also go to know Roger and Cindy better. Jon was going through a particularly hard time in life with his depression and anxiety and trying to get the right medications to help. We learned that Roger is a motivational speaker and he invited us to his new class he was teaching. We decided to go check it out. It was a 2 day event and it is called Crocodiles international. It was fantastic. Roger tries to help people with self mastery through connection with the great qualities that animals have. He discussed 30 animals and their amazing qualities and gave them each a special name to coincide with their qualities. For example: Otters actually fall to sleep holding hands in the water so that they don't lose track of each other. So they are a good example of encouragement and support. He named the otter, Ensuot; en for encourage su for support ot for others. He then said to choose qualities you would like to have and choose that animal and look at a picture of it each day for 21 days and try to possess that quality. He was a great speaker, he is from Australia and very funny. His personal story was very inspiring. He is very religious and optimistic and he didn't become that way by having an easy life. He was in discipline school as a child, he was beaten by the directors. His father was his best friend and biggest influence and he committed suicide when Roger was in his late teens. He found ways to overcome and be better and help others. He was truly inspiring. His program is really great and he is gearing it towards kids as well with songs to go with each animal. He would like to get it into schools. And I personally think the things his program would teach them would be of up most value in their life. If you teach kids when they are young that they are wonderful and capable of giving and receiving kindness and love this world would be an amazing place.
The people buying our home got an appraisal done at the end of May. And it came in low. We were really upset by this. I had already thought we were pricing it too low at 215,000. The appraisal came in at 200k. Being a Realtor I was livid. I had comparable properties that had sold for that amount and our home had a lot of really nice upgrades. That same day we got a call that there was a 20,000 judgement on the lot we were buying. Remember how I said Roger had been through some trials in his life, this was one of them. He did not know it was on his lot. Very sad, but needless to say we decided to cancel the sale of our house and the buy of Roger's lot.
We had some amazing spiritual experiences and sequence of events in connection with buying this lot. And it was hard to watch it fall apart. But maybe it was all to happen just so that we could meet Roger and Cindy. In the summer Cindy introduced me to Doterra essential oils which have been helpful to me in many ways. She is a good friend and I have enjoyed getting to know her.
Summer went by and we didn't think about moving much. School started and we thought we would just stay put. We really like the kids school. Which is not close to our home but we had a good carpool. They go to Lincoln Academy charter school and that is one of the main reasons we wanted to stay in North County. We really like their school. Every class has a teachers aid all day and so the kids get a lot more attention. The other reason to stay North is Jon likes to ride his bike to work and he can do that from here. So we thought we would just stay in our home. And then a couple weeks later 2 homes came up on KSL for sale by owner that we really liked. We made offers on them and decided to list our home on KSL. We had an offer in a couple days. We thought wow, everything is falling into place. Then the one offer we had made they decided they wanted more money, so they didn't accept our offer. I did really like that house and those people were really nice. But the house wasn't meant for us. They were an older couple named Janice and Jim. The other house was going to be ours until I did some research on the MLS and found out it had termites. Ya, termites in Pleasant Grove. That is only the 2nd house in 8 years of real estate that I have seen with evidence of termites. We decided we did not want to risk having all of the unseen damage that could be there.
At that point our home was under contract. We decided to move forward with selling our home and just have faith something would work out for us. The people buying our home gave us 60 days to move out. Their names were Becca and Rick Best. Very cute, nice, young couple that oddly enough look kind of like us. We searched and searched and searched. There was nothing for sale. I knocked on so many doors. Finally, I called the owner of a vacant lot in Cedar Hills. She was an older lady who lived in California. She said she and her husband did not plan to sell that lot but he had passed away this last year and she decided she could sale it now. I offered her 75k for the 1/2 acre lot. I offered low expecting her to counter offer but she said she would have her realtor in Utah call me. He called and said she would accept my offer. We were so excited!
We found an apartment in Cedar Hills that would allow a month to month lease and we were planning to move in and then we just got a weird feeling about it. So 3 days before we were suppose to move I searched for another apartment. I found one and they would let us do a 5 month lease instead of a year lease. We felt a lot better about it. So at the end of November we moved out of our house and started the building process. We had our mail transferred to our lot because they had CBU boxes and we got started.
I had met a builder in the summer named 1 Utah homes. And I really wanted to get a bid from them and from Doug again. We decided to modify our plans a little bit since we were buying the lot for less. 1 Utah homes bid came in lower and they were willing to do a set price, finance the deal, and pay me a commission. It was kind of a no brainer because with Doug it was a cost plus build, meaning what it cost to build plus his fee is what it would be and we had to get our own construction loan. But it really tore me up to choose 1 Utah homes. I really liked them, they were nice guys and good builders but I loved Doug's homes. He made every home absolutely beautiful and unique and put the extra touches in that made a house look really nice. But we decided it was smarter financially to go with 1 Utah homes.
We spent a month getting our plans modified. We went to the design center and chose all of our options. We had the perfect plan and colors and we were excited. We then submitted everything to the city and in January we got the approval to start building. A couple days before we were suppose to build we got a call from the General at 1 Utah homes. He was pretty upset and he said prices had gone up on lumber and drywall in the last week. He said he could not longer build our home for the price quoted and even though it was a set price there was a clause in the contract that said if prices go up in materials the price of the home will be adjusted. He said it was because of the Sandy hurricane in New York. Suppliers were shipping everything out east. So supply and demand were making prices go way up. This was not a small chunk of change. It was between 20-30,000. We were already maxed out at our set price so we decided to talk to Doug and see what he could do. He said prices had gone up but he could probably still match the price we needed. So we switched builders and went to get our construction loan. A couple weeks later we got our final fees for our loan and they were 10,000 higher then quoted. And at this point I was not getting a commission to help with the down payment so we were back in the same boat as before. We were so upset.
We had to make a decision and we decided it was smarter for us to not stretch that far out of our comfort range. We would be strapped every month and not have money to finish the basement or the yard. We did not want to be house poor. We decided to put the lot up for sale and look for another house. We also thought about building a little bit smaller home but that meant paying for a 3rd set of plans, grrrr. We put our lot up for sale at what we thought was a really high price while we decided if that was best. And within a week we had 3 offers. I could not believe how many people wanted this lot. We accepted an offer. We found a house by calling expired listings. We had made an offer on a house in the fall and they were not set on moving so they said to call back in the spring. We had no intention of calling back, we were going to build. But after everything fell through with that we decided to call them back. They accepted our offer and then our lot buyers backed out. Oh man, the roller coaster of emotions we have been through in the last year is not something I would recommend to anyone. A few days later we had another contract on our lot.
That bring us pretty current to today March 26, 2013. David Osmond is buying our lot. He was on American Idol a few years ago. It is looking pretty promising. Their earnest money is non refundable at this point so they probably will not back out. We are scheduled to close on the lot on April 10th. We will cross our fingers.
As for the house. The people selling it to us are Ronnie and Pam Smith. Last week Ronnie kind of freaked out on me and said they needed more time. I did not appreciate the way he approached that but we decided to give them until the end of April because I know how it is to try and figure out what to do about moving. And we had been so back and forth about this house for the last month that we figured the extra time gives us a couple more weeks to decide if it is right for us. The house is a big rambler with a 3rd car garage. But it does need a little updating, and it doesn't have a few things that were on our list like a walkout basement or kitchenette/ mother in law apt spot in the basement. And the one thing that is really bothering us is the yard is smaller than we wanted and there is no RV parking or room to build a detached garage if Jon would like one in the future. We know we do not have to stay there forever and who knows where our life will take us in the future but we want to buy something that could have possibilities Who knows, we might find that this house is just what we needed. The home has a lot of wonderful features. And we are extremely grateful to even have the chance to buy such a nice home for our family. We are just trying to figure out what is best for us and our financial situation. I have tried to follow the spirit a lot through this whole thing and I have learned a lot of lessons and me a lot of great people. We will see how this house goes. Some of the things we love about it are: it has a nice big mudroom and laundry room, a beautiful separate formal living room, a covered deck with a view of the Timpanogos temple, fruit trees, raspberry bushes, garden boxes, 8 bedrooms, a large basement family room, a good sized kitchen, dining and great room. It is in a culdesac which we love, it has a long front porch which was one of my big wants and it is red brick and white stucco which were the colors I chose. Also something crazy, I did not want the garage to stick out in front of the porch and this one doesn't. It is close to the kids school which is hard to find. And it is close to all of the bike trails we love to ride as a family. The murdock canal trail is practically in the backyard and Jon could ride that straight to work on his bike. Which he has done several time from our old house. So it has way more pros than cons. It is just hard to go from my very own floorplan that I made from scratch to someone else's home. We do love that the yard and basement are done which will save us a lot of money. We will see how the next month plays out. Unless something great comes up for less money we will be moving into this home on Dover Cir. next month. Yay, there is an end in site.
In the meantime we are in this little 2 bedroom apartment.We are a couple of miles away from our last home but the funny part is we are in Roger and Cindy's ward and they teach gospel doctrine and relief society. That has been a blessing. Jon says it was worth it to be in this ward just to hear the stake conference we had on Sunday. It has been hard to go back and forth to the school three times a day with no carpool. It takes 20 minutes round trip. It was hard to take all of our stuff from a 5 bedroom home with a 2 car garage and a big shed and fit it in a 1 car garage storage unit and a 2 bedroom apt. We have Bunk beds for the girls and a twin bed for Calvin in one room. And Jon and I in the other. The kids thought it was fun at first. Now they are getting tired of being so squished. The hardest part of all is we are tired of the people that live above us. They have loud drunken parties and they leave their beer cans and throw up outside. They let their kids stomp around upstairs and it sounds like they are going to come through our ceiling. We hear their personal bedroom moments which is extremely uncomfortable. And to top it off they do like 5 loads of laundry everyday from like 5pm-2am. I can not comprehend why they are doing that much laundry and it is so loud. It makes no sense at all to me. They never sleep, so consequently, neither do we. The other neighbors in the two 4 plexes are really quiet and nice and the kids get along well with the other kids. I guess this has been a big lesson in patience and gratitude. We will be happy to move in to a home again. There is nothing like living in your own house and having your own space. Here is to hoping we are out of here in the next month.
1 comment:
Wow, wow and wow!
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