It's a go

Well, we have done all the paper work and we qualified...which amazes me! We are building a house through Coleman homes! We are very excited and even more excited that we get to do it together and make it fully ours. They started digging on 6/23/11 and everyday we go and take pictures to document the progress. I will post some later.

We decided to build for a couple reasons: 1. There are 4 houses for sale in the area that are not short sales and we don't like them. 2. It is so cheap right now because the interest rate has hit rock bottom at 4.25% and people want work so they do it for cheap. 3. We are looking at long term and by building we can dictate what we want instead of settling on major things.

We wanted to do this now while the market is low and we are able to afford it. If the market changes any little bit, this would not be do-able for us. The house we are in is too small (amazingly) to expand a family in, but that is due to the layout and only ONE extra closet. I want to do it now before having kids added to the mix. I wanted an "ours" house.

The stats:
-Coleman homes is the builder who is sooo awesome compared to others
-We chose The Reed floor plan off of Mcmillam and Black Cat-yes 2miles down the road
-We got a bonus room and porch addition
-24oo sq ft-almost double our other house
-an office
-3 bed 2 bath
-lots of extras like granite and faux wood floors in certain areas

We have had to make lots of decisions and some stressful moments and some fun. It has been an interesting process. I highly recommend knowing exactly what you want and settling on some small things or the price jumps really fast with too many extras. All in all we got all this for $188,000 or for $73 a sq ft which is such a HUGE deal compared to what it used to cost. Our payment only went up $150/mo which is very do-able for us.

What about the other house? Well the market still sucks to seel, but the rental market is awesome with all the foreclosures so we are going to be landlords for awhile. Either we will keep it as an investment or sell it when the market goes back up it we can't stand being landlords.

I am going to miss our current house for everything I put into it like the yard. That took a lot and I love my trees, but we will begin again I suppose. I'm sentimental...I'll live.

To be cont....