Since we learned that we were expecting Stella we knew we had outgrown our house. We decided to convert the playroom back into a nursery and postpone the change a little while.
I think the impetus for the change was wanting to enroll Emilia in a better elementary school. So at the end of June Todd and I decided to talk to a realtor about our timeline and home marketability.
We picked Tom Brewer from Remax. He is awesome! He got right on the ball and got the house on the market on July 8, while we were on vacation in Colorado.
For a couple of weeks we worried that we might have put the house on the market too late. Now I think things feel little rushed. We had several offers on the house and there are people waiting for the deal to fall through so they can make an offer. In fact, we still have showing requests on the home although it is flagged under-contract.
The buyers chose a very picky inspector for the home. Even so, there were only some minor things that we need to have changed. The appraiser came through yesterday. We are waiting on his estimate to move forward. Overall I feel the deal is pretty solid although nothing is ever certain.
The house hunt
Todd, Stella and I traveled to Salt Lake City to look at homes last week. Todd was already planning a trip there for work and some friends of ours were driving up there the same weekend so after riding in the car for 24 hours from North Carolina, I jumped in their van for another 20 hr trip to Utah.
Originally I had hoped to find a house quickly and start the paperwork so that we might minimize the amount of time our things would be in storage. After the first couple of days, it became quickly apparent that there any many homes that meet our criteria in our price range.
We've found a house in Draper that is at the top of our price range, built in 2010 that meets our needs but there is nothing else to really chose from. Our hesitation is the area. The cheapest homes in the neighborhood (besides the one we found) are 500K and up. There are a lot of middle age families with a lot of disposable income and we don't fit that demographic. The other prevalent group is seniors who have lived in the area since before the building boom and occupy cute little farm homes with horse property.
We attended the ward on Sunday and saw only one other baby Stella's age. There were a few children's Emilia's age but the majority of the kids were teens.
Our other option is to build. We have been talking to a builder in South Jordan about developing on a lot next to DayBreak and the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. Our hesitation there is the wait. It will take aprox. five months to move in. I don't know if I want to live in an apartment for that long, especially during the winter months. I don't want to have to scraper snow from the car each morning or be crammed indoors with three kids because I can't just have them go play in the backyard without taking all of them with me. Plus I don't like the idea of spending the holidays in an apartment with all of our things in storage.
On the positive side, we'll be getting a new home built exactly the way we want it and we would be really close to Todd's family.
Preparing for the move has shifted our focus away from the house hunt. For now, it looks like we'll be storing our things and living with Todd's family for at least a few days until we find a place to stay.
