Well right now it is just a pile of dirt but soon it will be our dream home.

We weren’t looking to buy a new home. We were only looking to refinance our house of 16 years. Buying a new home at this exact moment wasn’t in “the plan” we had just laid out for the next few years of our life.

The Plan was to maybe start looking at the possibility of moving this summer or maybe look at making updates to our home of 16 years, but it definitely was not to make a home purchase at this moment. We just wanted to open up our options for whichever choice we were to make.

So, we made an appointment at the bank, got all of our paperwork together and went in to talk to the Home Loan Representative at the bank.

Our conversation went something like. “I see that you have excellent credit. And, I understand you have a home loan and a HELOC you would like to combine. Unfortunately, we can only help you with refinancing the home and we can’t help you with combining your HELOC into the loan. We currently do not lend for “cash out refi’s” which is what it would be to combine the HELOC into the loan.”

This is definitely not how we thought this conversation would start. The plan we had play out in our heads was to have no problems combine our loans to get a lower interest rate, thus, lowering our house payment which would allow us to really plan out what we wanted to do – stay in our house or go.

With knowing that interest rates were at a low, the conversation turned to “well, it looks like our best option to take advantage of the lower interest rates / lower house payments would be to buy a new place and sell ours.” With that phrase coming out of my mouth, the Home Loan Representative gave me the look that told me – “yes, that is your best option”.

So that began our whirlwind of buying our house.

We had been following interest rates but really not following the amount of homes for sale. We had heard from friends that there wasn’t much on the market but that really clicked into our brains when we started “just seeing what is out there” because we didn’t think we were ready to buy.

The one thing that the Home Loan Representative at the bank did help with is giving us a ball park for the amount we would qualify for a new home purchase. So knowing that amount, we opened the computer, went to an MLS search and started “just looking” in the areas and towns that we had talked about in the past for homes in the price range the Home Loan Representative gave us for a loan amount – just to see what was out there. Which we quickly saw was not a lot of options.

We also knew that before we could even begin on a search, we had to know what our house was worth so we made an appointment with our neighborhood expert real estate team (The Rosie Rourke Team at Keller Williams) to get an idea of if we did put our house on the market, what could we list it for.

And Then We Saw It.

As I was “just looking” on a Zillow search one home kept coming up in my searches. Not our house. But, it was the model home for our builder. We didn’t know it was the model at the time – just that it was a new home for sale. We knew we needed to see this house and quickly. It had all of the home qualities (inside and out) that was on both our check lists. And, from what we were now seeing, houses were selling in a few days. So, we called Rosie and made an appointment to see the house the next day with her buyer team, Karen and Lexie.

As we met Karen and Lexie at the model home the next day, we loved the house. The only thing was, this house was not for sale. But … there was one of this house style left in the development … and it was 3 houses up from the lake. We were also told that they were just about to release some houses for sale in Phase 2 of the development. Knowing this, we had to find out what they looked like. We looked at the marketing fliers and walked through an almost completed home (as we call it – Lot 1) and another home that was in the framing phase. We loved both homes.

But still we were not sure. There were things we didn’t know – what was our house worth, would we need to sell first then buy? These were just two of the questions that swirled in my head. We had just started looking. What else could be out there?

We Got Some Numbers.

We met with Rosie and Liz (our selling team) and got some numbers for our house. We knew that with this number we could easily buy one of the houses we saw. But still, what else was out there? The super careful/organized part of my brain kept wanting facts and figures and kept saying, just look at some more. So we did.

Karen and Lexie took us to look at other homes in other developments from our builder. We looked at other new builds by different builders. But our thoughts kept going back to our builder – SoundBuilt Homes.

We made an offer.

We went back and looked at the homes in the development again. We were ready to place an offer on the same plan as the model (that was 3 houses from the lake) but were 14 hours too late. It was sold.

The houses that were available in Phase 2 of the development were The Emerald (my first choice) and The Coronado (Leon’s first choice) … although we didn’t know when they would be released for sale. What we did find out was The Coronado would be close to the last house in the development that would be released and there were already 6-7 buyers who were waiting for it’s release to make an offer.

Two days later – on a Saturday, the day before The Superbowl – we found out our house (our Emerald Nest) was released for sale. It was a sign. One of our first choice plans, on a lot tucked in the back was ready for us to buy.

We didn’t know where the house would sit on the lot. It was just a pile of dirt, but we knew we needed to make an offer – quickly, before it was gone. Karen and Lexie were rock stars, Karen quickly drew up our offer, got it to the builder and then we waited – hoped and dreamed.

Offer excepted.

It was Superbowl Sunday. A little over 24 hours since we submitted our offer and Superbowl ended. As the clock ticked to about 10 minutes before our offer was to expire, we sat waiting … and stressing … would our offer be accepted?

Just then the phone rang with Karen on the other line telling us the words we had hoped for … “Congratulations, you just bought a house!”