Moving to the country!

Trey again...

Warning - this is a long story and is about the past so if you have something in the oven or have been drinking lots of fluids you are encouraged to take breaks so as not to have an accident or overdose on the wordy inner workings of my thoughts and experiences.

I will start with the thing that has taken up the most time and energy in our lives since late last year.  After much thought and deliberation, Kylie and I decided to build a new home.  When we told Landry this, she got a very concerned look on her face before saying that she thought it would be best if daddy does most of the work since he has all the tools.  We have since said that we are paying professional builders to build our house.

That being said, this was easily the most stressful decision in the history of forever.  To move or stay? To build or buy?  Where? Allen, Lucas, Fairview, Prosper, McKinney, Celina or anywhere in between?  You name it, we considered it. 

This journey has taken the better part of 2 years looking, exploring and researching (schools, neighborhoods, builders, tax rates, future land plans, HOA’s and people…oh the people).  In the end, we somehow arrived at a decided to build a new house in an established neighborhood in Prosper TX.  

Whew, glad that decision is made, and now I can relax…WRONG!  They never told me that was just the beginning of the chaos.

Our future home site

So we decided to build a new house…now what?

Rent it or sell it?

How much can we get for it? 

When should we put it on the market? 

Well, with mixed emotions, we decided to sell our house.  At the advice of our builder, we planned to list it in February.  “Why” you may ask.  Seems like a fair question since our new house is not expected to be ready before the end of June.  For some reason, he said that this is the best time to list your house if you want to get top dollar…and that was good enough for me.  So, we got a storage unit, and promptly filled it to the top, along with all our attic space.  It is amazing the amount of junk we accumulated in the past 9 years of marriage and family. 

After properly purging and cleaning the place, we prepared to put her on the market the second week in February.  Did I mention we had no real plan to bridge the gap between February and the end of June?  Looking back on it now, I am sure everyone thought we were crazy, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

I did, however, decide that it would be wise put out some feelers to see if we could stay with my parents if needed.  After multiple attempts to bring up the subject, it became clear to me that they were not overjoyed at the prospect of their prodigal son returning to the room he grew up in along with his family of 4.  Oh well, we would figure something out when the time came.  In the mean time our house was getting started.

Selling the only Home we have ever known

I sent Kylie and the girls to stay with her Mom while I handled the “important house selling business”.  In the back of my mind, I was thinking, this was going to be great.  I had the house to myself (Thurs – Sun) and all I had to do was leave for a few minutes at a time when someone wanted to come see the house…no problem…relaxation here I come…WRONG!

The girls left around 3:00 (about the same time our house hit MLS).  I was just getting comfy on the couch when suddenly my phone started going nuts.  Literally I have had the house to myself for 30 minutes!  Text after text with notifications that people were scheduling times to come see the house…not in a day or two, but in a few minutes.  WTF… I’m homeless!  They never stopped…Thursday – Sunday, I think we had between 30 and 40 showings.  Needless to say, it was not the relaxing weekend I secretly planned in my head. 

The good news was that by Saturday we had multiple offers, and this whole listing the house in February thing seemed to be working out just like our builder said it would.  Then it started to dawn on me that if we sell this thing, we are really going to have to move (along with all of our stuff…not to mention a two & five yr old).   I was not real big on the idea of living in an apartment for 3-4 months and my parents house did not seem like a great idea for that length of time either. Yikes!

They better hurry!

The rare and elusive Win-Win 

On Saturday I woke up early (anxiety) and was sitting in my office reviewing the different offer sheets on the house until I had to leave for our first scheduled visitor around 10:30.  About 9:00 a group of people came walking up to the house.   I answered the door, and quickly realized they were here to see the house.  The system that had so often interrupted my attempts at relaxation over the past couple of days, failed to notify me they were coming (glad I was decent).   I apologized for being there and quickly gathered my things to leave.  Before I left, they asked me several questions about the house and neighborhood.  I did my best to answer them all without violating any realtor codes.  Then they asked me about our situation, and I proudly explained our plan to build our dream home and sheepishly shared our projected timeline.  I let them know that we had multiple offers already, but ideally we would like to find a way to stay in the house until our new home is ready.   Then I went on my way. 

As it turns out, they were looking for a house like ours and did not want to move until this summer.  They had a young daughter that seemed to really like Landry’s room upstairs along with the all the girl’s toys.  They stayed at the house for about an hour (I know because I was homeless) so I knew they were either interested in the house, or they really liked the play list I picked out that morning.  They ended up putting in an offer, and we worked out a deal to allow us to stay in the house until our new home is ready.  See, I knew what I was doing all along...ha!  Or, as my Mom would say…”it was a God thing.”

Now we are all-in.  We are excited to be building our next home in Prosper in time for Landry to start school in the fall.  Our current house is going to a good family who was nice enough to let us stay until our new home is ready, and we only have to move once.  My Mom and Dad dodged a bullet, and we don’t have to worry about stressing any family relationships that could ruin future Christmas dinnersJ

Given the events described above along with a few classified ones, I have informed Kylie that we will be living in our next home for eternity, as I am unable to see myself going through this process again. 

I am exhausted all over again...this blogging thing is hard work!

If you read this far, you are too kind (or really board) now go get some rest!

Until next time,

Trey