The road to home (or should I say- FARM) ownership

So it's been a while since I updated. We've been busy. I mean REALLY busy. Let's catch up.

Last time I posted, we were soul searching over a beautiful old Victorian (built in the 1880s) in the little town where my husband now works. We decided not to pursue it. It was a short sale and as first time home buyers, we just did not want to get ourselves into something like that.

So we decided to build. From May until October, we threw ourselves into the building process. We chose our house plan, worked out the details with the architectural firm (Allison Ramsey of South Carolina- awesome people. LOVE THEM!), began talking with local banks about construction loans, and started searching for builders.

And that's where it got crazy. The new construction loan process was pretty smooth- believe it or not. However, getting a commitment from a builder was not so easy. In fact it ended up being the downfall of our project. Five builders did not even call us back. One met with us and said he would be back in contact with pricing-  we never heard from him again (and he was the president of the local home builders association to boot!). One refused to commit to pricing all together and the final builder backed out last minute.

For a while we took it personally. Maybe we were too direct? Maybe we were too practical? Maybe we  just had no idea what we were doing? I checked with a couple of other builder associations to ask if we were going about the process correctly and they said yes. They also said they have received multiple complaints about builders refusing to return calls, refusing to commit to price quotes, not finishing jobs, etc. Seems like during the recent economic downfall of the housing bust, many builders are out of business and the ones who stuck it out are a bit frayed at the edges.

So the week our last builder backed out, we decided to explore our options. We called up our local real estate agency (the same one who showed us the beautiful Victorian in town) and gave him some details about what we were looking for and a price range. Back to house hunting we went.

That afternoon, he had four prospective properties for us to view. He showed us a pretty green ranch style house nestled between two mountains. It had a little over 11 acres- with page wire fencing, a working chicken coup with yard, a functioning goat shed, an additional small animal barn, a pond, an in ground swimming pool, and a separate 1300 square foot block building with a canning room! My husband and I talked about it for a day or so. It had everything we were dreaming of. It was a working farm! So we decided to make an offer.

When the offer was accepted I was overjoyed, terrified, anxious, ecstatic, and heartbroken all at the same time. We had spent years dreaming of a house on our 30 acre farm. We had our house plan. I had the cabinets picked out. I had paint chips and samples of wood flooring.

But that is how life goes. If you hold onto something so tight it blocks the light of possibility around you, you might just miss out. So I put my book of dreams on the shelf and there is shall stay until someday- or not. Life is about being flexible and pursing your dreams in whatever form they may come.

To be continued......