Finally, after 6 months of tears, frustration, and soul searching, the excitement begins. (I know this is long, but I also know many people have been asking what is going on with our home, if you are one that wanted to know, read on, if not, my feelings will not be hurt.)
Many of you know that we decided it was time to move last October, and began looking for a new home in November. Our house went up for sale in April, sold in June, and we have been "homeless" ever since. On June 27th, knowing we had to be out of our home in 2 days and desperate for a roof over the kids heads we signed a lease on a home in Clearfield (about 1 mile west of where we lived for the last 10 years). The home is in ill repair, bug infested, and only has 3 bedrooms so we are anxious to make this stay as short as possible.
When we set out on this process we had decided to only look at existing homes. We know how particular and strong headed both Gerald and I can be about things we want and felt the best way for us to reach a compromise on a home and keep our marriage intact would be to know we would have to both make concessions and find a home we could both agree on. Well, after looking at 150+ homes in Davis County, we still stuggled. For Gerald either the location was not right, power lines in back yard, high water table causing flooding in basement, not large enough yard for the garden he wants, or the dining room was too small for our table. (Yes, he measured each home with a tape measure when we got there). For me it was not enough bedrooms, too small family room/kitchen, poorly designed floor plan, or just plain homes that were not taken care of and had way too much repair/cleaning work.
Many well meaning family and friends would call with a listing they knew would be just "perfect" for us. Unaware that we really have looked at EVERY home in the area in our price range (even many above and below) that came up for sale in the last 10 months. In other words, if it had a for sale sign up (or even if they were thinking of selling it, we had ALREADY been inside). Despite the most patient realtor ever, a 12 year old daughter that spent many, many, many hours babysitting, and a computer that had 3 or 4 different MLS sites running simulaneously a minimum of 4 hours each day, our house simply wasn't out there.
Mostly out of frustration, we began looking at building our home. We began talking to the bigger builders, learning that pretty much all we were able to get through them was a tract home similar to the one we had before. Then we then began interviewing custom builders. To our surprise, not only were they better priced, but allowed us the flexiblity to get exactly (to a point) what we were looking for.
We settled on a price, lot, and builder, and began designing our home. Or so we thought. Each time we called the owner of the lot (snake #1) to place an offer he 1)would tell us either he had another offer and we had to raise our offer to match, or 2)he would raise the price of the lot the day our offer came in. I suppose he thought we wanted it so bad we would pay anything. Well, the lot is still available if anyone wants to play his games. (Not to mention, the beautiful view that sold us on the lot has been now blocked by an enourmous "monument" of a home so I anticipate the lot sitting vacant for many years to come.) Not getting that lot, our builder (snake #2) convinced us our only option was to build in Layton. The whole purpose we had wanted to move was to get to Kaysville and cut down on my 6 x per day commute there. Feeling defeted, we agreed, signed an intent to purchase agreement on the new lot, and began the count down to start. In the mean time we began doing some research on our new lot. We found out the now quite area was soon to be surrounded by 2 major collector roads to the freeway and a new highway that is being built in our area. About 3 weeks into this process I got a call from Gerald early in the morning. He was driving by Kaysville on his way to work and felt very strogly that we needed to cancel the contract on the lot and look in Kaysville again despite the financial hardship of increasing the price of the home 30K.
By that night we had found a new lot, verbally set a contract and were off to the races... or so we thought. Our contractor sent the offer in then began acting very strange. After making several concessions to him already to get this project started, (such as paying $1700 for house plans my archetect sister-in-law and structural engineer husband were working on for free), he began changing the game. He began conviently forgetting things like the bedrooms and bathroom he had agreed to finish in the basement, the fact that this was a custom home meaning I was able to pick out things like faucets and lighting that I liked. Then the kicker, as he began removing all these items... cutting the carpet allowance in half, and making it all but impossible to meet the budget and have the house we had envisioned, he raised the price $15K. Even if we wanted to, we could no longer afford the home... and the new lot.
Gerald set up an appointment with him to go over the budget to better undersand his numbers. (To this point we had priced out 2/3 of the home already and couldn't understand why his numbers were coming in so high.) The appointment was for 4pm on Monday, by 1pm I received a call from Gerald that the contractor had decided he could not build our house. The excuse he gave was that if he only had to work with Gerald it would be okay, but because I cried at our last meeting and voiced my opinion that I felt he had been dishonest with us by suddenly changing the game at the last minute, he could not work with me. I felt this was interesting, because he had only met me twice, and I mostly let Gerald do all the talking. Now, being without a contractor meant once again being without a lot because in our contract he was the one carrying the loan on the lot. (I could get into all the legaleze here of how he was in breech of contract by terminating the agreement and our legal rights to sue, but we just wanted to purchase the lot, move on and build our home.)
Easier said than done. After several phone calls to the owner of the lot, we felt safe that we could still move on, and purchase the lot after the contractor cancelled our contract. In fact, more than once a verbal agreement was made that the lot was ours. We went forward, applied with 3 banks for construction loans, and in the process agreed to the appraisal of the home (built on that lot). Then the kicker, the appraisal came though and the owner of the lot would not return any of our calls. Finally, a week later and after several attempts on our part, he called. Knowing all we had already invested into this lot, he saw the oppurtunity to take advantage of us... (third snake in the grass!!!) He informed my husband that if we did not increase our offer $5000 he would not sell to us. (Here I could go over all the issues I now have with this man's intregity, and all the opputuntities he had to increase his asking price over the previous 3 weeks before we invested so much money into the process, but again, we knew he conciously made the decision to take advantage of us... the phrase "kick a horse when he's down" applies very well... even his wife admitted how uncomfortable she felt with the situation, but that is a whole story of it's own. However, if anyone is looking for a financial advisor in Davis County, I know who NOT to reccomend.)
At this point, we called up our very kind, and very patient realtor again, looked at all the homes that had come up on the market during the last 3 months hoping to find an acceptable compromise. Unfortunately, we were just left with an even stronger impression that we need to build, in Kaysville, on that lot. All our prayers that this man would decide to be honest, uphold his verbal contracts, and be blessed for it were for naught, and we ultimately felt that perhaps we would be blessed for giving in, tightening our belts and moving forward, knowing we did all we could, and cannot change the situation.
Last Tuesday we were informed our construtction loan was approved as Gerald as our contractor, by Thursday we had closed on the lot... and now the fun begins.
(I must add here, we looked at many beautiful homes in Kaysville that are and were for sale that someone will absolutely love... perhaps even you... but they were simply not for us for one reason or another.)
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