I Need A Home to Nest In

Once we arrived in our new home city and got settled in our rental condo, one of our first priorities was locating a house.  We are currently renting a one bedroom condo that is fully furnished.  While the location is really cool and suites our needs for now, it won't work for too much longer.  We knew that we wanted to have our own home and our own belongings as soon as we could get them.  (Remember, we haven't had our own "stuff" since before Thanksgiving of 2010 and we are currently paying a monthly storage fee for this). 

And in our first few weeks here, I spent a lot of my time with our real estate agent previewing houses and narrowing the field down to what was worth a second look with Derek in tow.  (Once again, can I say that some people/houses smell really bad???)

From previous visits to our city, we had decided that we wanted to live in town.  The city we moved to is not a huge city, but it is really a happening place.  There festivals, wineries, cool restaurants, plays - all kinds of things to do.  And our thought was that we wanted to live in the middle of all of that so that we could walk to the downtown area.  There are tons of really cool city blocks with lots of older homes with tons of character.

That was before we were pregnant.  Viewing the city as an infertile vs. an expectant mother will change your views on what you really want and need.  We had to have a heart to heart about how our requirements for our house would change based on the fact that we had a child on the way.  We were quick to rule out any houses that didn't have a back yard or proximity to a playground.  We also ruled out anything that was too close to a busy street OR anything that would be hard to put up a fence around the backyard.  When you added that to the fact that we didn't want to go above a certain price range, wanted a 2 car garage, wanted a house where our existing furniture would work AND didn't want to buy another house that would be a constant project, we had pretty much narrowed down all of our choices in town.  Desperate to find something, we expanded our search to a certain area outside of town that we also felt was desirable. 

Thanks to our agent, we found a house in town in a great location (walking distance to the beach and to the downtown area) that wasn't even listed yet.  A builder had purchased an older home and had demolished it and is rebuilding a brand new home in the location.  The price was in our range, but it only had a one car garage.  We put in an offer and negotiated a second garage.  All in, we are still in the price we want to be at.  So, we are now under contract for this house.  Since it is still under construction, we will get to have some say in certain features of the house.  Today, I picked out carpet.  Tomorrow, I will tackle the appliances.  Hopefully, the next day I can conquer the lighting.

And, if all goes according to plan and the construction schedule isn't interrupted, by the end of February we will be living in our new home in our new city with all of our belongings safely nestled inside.