The purchase of the “Builder Grade to Modern” home

My husband and I sold our house in Minnesota a few weeks ago…woooohooo!!  We even sold it all by ourselves.  Pretty proud of us.  Go team! 😉  Here are a few pics of the house.  Even though I’m SO excited to move back to Iowa and be closer to family, I love our neighborhood and sad to leave all that wall stenciling I did!

Now time to find a home back in Iowa!  This should be an exciting time especially how much we LOVE watching Love It or List It, Property Brothers, and Fixer Upper BUT it has just been a big ball of stress.

We all have a dream in life.  For me, it’s always been to have my ‘dream home’…actually to design my dream home.  As an interior designer, this is very important for me.  Before I die (literally), I want to design my home.  See the progress from start to finish, pick all the finishes/details, and of course decorate every.single.room.  I know…I know, I have all my life to have that ‘dream home.’  As much as I would love be in our ‘forever home’ with our next home purchase, we aren’t ready just yet.  The idea in my head of what our next house was going to be vs. our budget did not meet eye to eye.  Instead, it’s meeting belly button to eye.  As much as we would love to use all the profit we are going to make with the house we just sold, we have important plans for that instead of putting all of it towards our next home.  Since I am ‘retiring’ from photography to stay at home with kids, we can only rely on my husband’s income.  1 income vs 2 in a household will sure make a big difference determining the price of the house we can afford, the monthly mortgage we can be comfortable with, etc.  The last thing we want is to be over our heads!  We have no desire to keep up with the Joneses’.   They can all keep up with each other, but we’ll go on our own pace.

This quote is pretty funny though! 😀

With the budget for the house, we can’t get all of our needs/wants with our next house.  That also means that building a house is not ideal for our situation.  Really though, the most stressful part right now is snatching up a house before someone else makes an offer.  It’s a great time for all the sellers since houses are selling like pancakes!  As a buyer, it kinda stinks especially since there isn’t much inventory where we want to purchase a home.  I seriously send houses to our realtor that we want to look at.  She then notifies us right away that someone already made an offer on those houses that 1) don’t even have pictures online yet AND 2) has only been on the market for a couple days.  UGH!

This past weekend we spent the weekend in Iowa and looked at 8 different houses yesterday with our realtor.  Here is our wish list (from need to want):

1) Finished basement
2) 5 bedrooms or a 5th nonconforming bedroom so all the kids have their own room
3) After living in a home with an open floor plan, we decided how much we really don’t love it.  I know that might be weird.  The open floor plan concept is so popular right now.  As much as I want to know what my kids are doing, I don’t really want to see all their toys from every angle of the room.  What we really like is the ‘traditional 2 story layout.’  Maybe that’s just a made up concept, but we want a formal dining room, formal living room, family room, and kitchen on the main level.
4) Vaulted family room or formal living room
5) mature trees / wooded lot or open field in the back so there’s no neighbor right behind
5) 3 stall garage
6) A catwalk on the 2nd floor overlooking the main level (ok, this is definitely a ‘want’ and not a ‘need’).  I remember designing my dream home in high school and it had a catwalk back then!  This one is more for the ‘dream home.’  Not really expecting it for our next house, but if there’s a house that has it…GREAT!

In the 5th house we looked at, these words slipped out of my mouth 1) this reminds me so much of our house now…it has builder grade finishes  2) maybe we can redo this home and make it different too like our house now 3) make profit again.  Not sure if I really meant that we should.  Not sure if I was just talking to myself.  I don’t even know if my husband even said anything back.

After looking at all the houses, my husband and I felt very discouraged.  We told our realtor that these houses were not for us.  Of course, none of the houses had everything on our list, but we were definitely willing to give and take.  Did we want to just settle though?  Buying a house is a huge purchase.  Maybe we should wait until more go on the market?  If we want to go from our house now to the new house smoothly, we would have to purchase a home within a week.  If we didn’t, where in the world are we staying?  Do we want to rent for awhile?  All these thoughts running through our heads our 4.5 hour ride back to Minnesota.

After 3 hours in the car, my husband blurts it out:  “I think we should get the 5th house we looked at.”  He had to give me a second to process what came out of his mouth.  I had to remember which house he was even talking about!  Then I remembered.  He was listening to me earlier. 😉  Please note everyone that this house doesn’t have a finished basement, doesn’t have a 5th bedroom/nonconforming bedroom, has an open floor plan which we didn’t want, doesn’t have a vaulted living/family room, has no mature trees, has houses right behind us, only has a 2 stall garage, and doesn’t have a catwalk.  Did you just read all that?  It doesn’t have ANYTHING that was on our wish list!   What it does have?  A great price…..we had to think of what was best for us financially right now with only 1 income.  A potential of a builder grade home to become an updated modern home…..I’m so excited to transform this bad boy!  As much as I dislike moving I know in a few years when we sell this house, we’ll be ready to purchase a home or even build our very own dream home.

Today, the seller accepted our offer.  We are going to reside in Waukee!  My husband even jokes that maybe we’ll update this house so much, I won’t want to leave.  We shall see, I guess!

Watch out for progress pics of our ‘builder grade to modern’ home!