Well, this has been a long time coming. We closed yesterday on our new home...a major milestone in this journey that has consumed most of 2017. We had to call in a LOT of miracles to bring this to fruition, and our work is not done. But let me back up and start at the beginning.
Since the summer, I had been locked in on a house in McCormick Ranch. It had a big, finished basement, which gave it some more square footage compared to other homes in the area. I think we can all agree that McCormick Ranch is the best location in town. We visited it a bunch of times. I was ready to put in an offer...but I was kind of ready to put in an offer on anything that would get this ball rolling. Dylan was hesitant but he played along to keep me happy.
And then, all of a sudden, the house of our dreams appeared on the MLS in early October. And by "house of our dreams," I meant that it checked off all the major boxes: good location (2nd best in my opinion!- 96th and Cactus), large lot, no HOA, decent floor plan, swimming pool, 3-car garage, and the cherry on top...a guest house. It even had a few putting greens for Dylan. The backyard is perfect for a party. It's a very typical 1980s Scottsdale home which could stand to be re-stuccoed and painted...I won't pretend that it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen BUT it
is the most beautiful thing to us because it is perfect.
We looked at the house at 11am the day after it went on the market. Dylan was excited about it and totally on board. He has balanced me out so good throughout this whole process. While I was quick to see every house as "perfect" for us, he held out faith that our actual perfect house was out there and continued with steadfast patience in that belief for months and months. I was convinced that perfection was unattainable, and I didn't really care. (Now, obviously, I'm glad that we didn't jump the gun on anything else we looked at in the last few months.) Anyway, the fact that
he was excited about the house made the whole thing seem really fantastic.
We left the house that morning and decided we'd make an offer. We went to show pictures of it to my parents about two hours later, and when we pulled up the listing, the status had already changed to "pending." A cash offer at full asking price had already come in and been accepted. We've looked high and low for the better part of a year at almost every house in Scottsdale that has come on the market, and we've never seen anything like that happen. So, we put in our not-as-great back-up offer and just got on with our lives because what could we do?
The phone rang a couple weeks later. The deal had fallen through, and a few days after that, we received a counter offer from the seller. We accepted the counter offer and got ourselves involved in a deal that would involve so many hoops to jump through that my head started to spin from the get-go.
The most gigantic headache of all time was the solar panel lease. I won't pretend like I did any of the legwork in finding a way around this massive problem. It was all D. But I was all stressed out about it. Leasing solar panels is a terrible decision. It makes no financial sense. In fact it's financially detrimental. The house has a monstrous solar panel system, which is great because we are all about reducing our carbon footprint. But we'd be taking over the solar lease that would have us paying monthly double what our regular electrical bill would be by the end of the term. A term that lasts 25 years! Holy smokes.
Well, Dylan did his homework. Buying out the panels was not an option. I won't even give you the number for the pay-off, but it was a stupid. Especially considering that the efficiency of solar panels deteriorates over time, and they probably wouldn't even function in 25 years. The number to pre-pay the remainder of the lease was still stupid, but about half as much as buying the panels. And with the lease, the company guarantees the efficiency of the panels for the life of the term. We had some tough negotiations with the seller, and he gave us a slight reduction on the purchase price. With all things considered, we determined that paying off the lease would be like pre-paying our electrical bill for the next 21+ years. While it's never financially savvy to pay off something two decades in advance with no interest to be collected, we kept in mind that this was an investment in our family...not just a financial investment. We justified it enough in our heads to be okay with it. If you're ever looking at a house with leased solar panels, I'd recommend finding out what the seller has in mind as far as paying off the lease before you get too far into the deal.
Next hurdle...the inspection report was disastrous. At some point, the trusses in the attic had been cut, which caused other trusses to buckle. Repairs would involve a structural engineer. And that was just
one of the items from the inspection. I won't get into the rest because it's boring. But it was going to involve a lot of money. After the inspection came back, the seller wanted to sell the house "as-is" for a reduction in the purchase price. But, the price was not low enough for us to take on all the repairs and the solar panel lease. We had to kill the deal. So, we signed the papers and just hoped that maybe he would come around again in a month or so with a more reasonable deal that would make it financially feasible for us to buy the house. (Assuming nobody else bought the house first.)
I went on a jog that morning after signing the deal-killing papers and got all in my head about it, and then I decided that I was done. Just totally done with it all. I knew I wanted to move, and I knew it was the right thing for us. But at that point, our house had been on the market for almost six months. I had poured so much energy and attention into getting this place sold and finding a new house, and I was exhausted. I thought we were due for a win, but since we weren't going to get that, I decided to give myself a break. I wasn't going to take moving completely off the table, but I wanted the idea of it out of my life for a few months. I had been driving myself crazy by keeping everything in its perfect place in this house at all times in preparation for any potential showings, and it had all been for nothing. Just to take that off the table would free up so much time in my day and bring down my frustration factor by 10-fold, and I was ready for the break. I mean, it is maddening to make beds and fluff pillows and chase people with paper towels wiping up at least 100 messes every day. It had gone on too long, and I was ready to wave the white flag.
But I guess the deadline to kill the deal wasn't for another day, and the paperwork didn't get officially submitted. The seller came back around and took a little bit more off the purchase price as a final offer the next morning...which was also my 36th birthday. It wasn't really enough money to cover the expenses involved in buying the house. Not even close. But, for some reason, I suddenly knew in my heart without a doubt that we should accept and move forward with the purchase. Dylan agreed. When we thought about it, we were hoping to get a lot more money from the seller to cover the repairs and solar lease, but it was an amount of money that, in the long run, probably wouldn't make a huge difference. We knew we'd be pissed if we let this house get away from us. So, the deal was active again!
We had crossed the biggest hurdle, but the story wasn't over yet. The seller had a ton of stuff stashed in the attic and guest house, and he was hoping to auction it all. However, he couldn't get an auctioneer until after our close date, so our closing was extended by two weeks. This was fine with us because the longer it took for us to close, the less time we'd be floating two mortgages. Then we hit a roadblock with our financing when our rate was a half point higher than we thought we could get elsewhere. We ultimately met halfway and solved that problem, which was the right thing to do. How awful it would have been to blow up the deal because our financing didn't come through in time after switching mortgage brokers.
After that debacle, the lender learned about the new, later closing date. Apparently the rate was only locked in until shortly after the original closing date. We got that figured out when the seller agreed to cover the costs to extend the rate lock, and after that it was full steam ahead on the deal.
By the end of the first week in November, we were 30 days from close. At this point, it was time for us to put a plan in place for getting work done on the house. Not only would the house require structural repairs, but we were hoping to spruce things up a bit, too. We wanted to re-do the floors and paint, at minimum. But also, the kitchen and bathrooms needed updating, and the fireplace could stand to be refinished. The front door and windows were original to the house and needed to be replaced, and a fresh set of interior door hardware (and light fixtures, and fans, and the list goes on and on) would help things a lot, too. We were also hoping to add a pantry (something the house currently doesn't have) and possibly add on to the master suite since the closet space was very, very small. We knew that we wouldn't have room in the budget to get everything done, so it would be all about planning and prioritizing. Right now, we're hammering out the final details, and the project should start soon. Stay tuned to where you can follow along on that. I won't burden you with posting every step of the renovation on this blog because, for a lot of people who read this, that will be pretty boring, I'm sure. But if you like HGTV and design blogs, well maybe you'll add my secondary blog to your reading list.
It's a busy time of year for us and everyone, but even still, I am happy to be taking on this project. All of the projects of the last decade have involved so much adulting- starting a career, getting married, growing babies in my body and then parenting them. All of which, of course, are wonderful things. I've been blessed in a million different ways. However, I haven't really had the opportunity to immerse myself in a personal project that really excites me in a unique way. While the renovations will most definitely involve my family, most of the ideas for it will be from me, and most of the decisions about the finishes will likely be mine. I'm sure I'll get stressed and frustrated at times...but nothing worth doing is every easy, right? I am so ready for this.
The theme for most of 2017 has been "moving." And, for the most part, it's been incredibly frustrating. So, as a side theme, we've also added "personal growth" to describe the past year. It's been a journey, for sure, but one that will hopefully be wrapping up soon. Dylan and I have both come a long, long way since the beginning of last year. Through disappointment and patience and all the highs and lows, we've grown in so many ways. For me, I know that I've become a lot more resilient, grateful, patient, trusting in the plans for my life that aren't up to me, and I've been able to let go of control in the areas that really are out of my control. I can see the good, even during bad times. Really, I've opened myself up to a whole new world, and I couldn't be more glad about it. It was worth every second of frustration. While some families are forced to endure unfathomable pain and overcome unthinkable hardship, I can only be grateful that a comparably small challenge has brought so much good to my life.
And with that, I'd just like to call in one more miracle. While we're grateful for the timing of different factors unfolding in our situation for a variety of reasons, we still have one little detail up in the air. Morning Vista has not officially sold. It is so nice to be rooted in our home of eight years for the holiday season and to be able to transition slowly to our new house on Sunnyside. We could have found ourselves in a short-term rental with all our stuff in storage or bunking up with my parents for a couple months had things turned out differently. Obviously, it has been nicer to stay home and to move our things all on our own over a long period of time. (Luckily we have a garage and casita to store it all until construction is complete!) Things are moving in the right direction to get Morning Vista officially sold. But everyone knows that until the keys actually change hands, we cannot count on any real estate deal to come through. Like I already said, we've been the blessed recipients of many miracles, some of which were not even revealed in this blog post, and we wouldn't have gotten the new house without everything falling into place at the right time. Once Morning Vista is sold, though, we'll really be able to breathe in a deep sigh of relief and close this chapter. It will be a good, good day.
Honestly, though, the way that everything has come together so far has been living proof that we must trust in God's timing of things. For that reason, I really haven't obsessed with worry about selling Morning Vista. It's a serious situation and one that could result in some hardship if things don't pan out pretty quickly. But, it's out of my control. I just really trust that this piece of the puzzle is all part of the plan. It took a long, long time, but it resulted in a lot of personal growth and an ultimate payoff that will be well worth the the struggle, uncertainty and frustration. The house on Sunnyside will turn out to be an immeasurable blessing to our family, and to pay that forward we hope to open our doors to family, friends and neighbors as much as possible. Nothing is more life-giving than spending time with the good people in our lives, and we want more of that. Come see us at Sunnyside once renovations are complete in a couple of months. We can't wait to see you there!
