The Letter

We just put the letter in the mail. Today, Wednesday, May 20, 2pm.

The letter to the owner of the land we love. 

I wanted to write it right away, Bob wanted to wait "a week or two" to really think about what we want to say.

Grrrrr.

But I waited. And thankfully, God provided plenty of distractions. I really haven't thought about it much with my (FUN!) trip to New Hampshire and all the end of sports and school-year activities we've had.

But it's written. A read, and re-read. And printed. And signed. And SENT!

We're praying!

Dream House(s)

In doing all this home-building research and talking to builders, we've discovered that we love the historical home look. Big porches, wood siding and I love lacy corbels (those thingies that go out at a 45 degree angle from the top of the post to the ceiling).

Examples:

I FELL IN LOVE with THIS ONE, but I feel it's a little too fancy for me and I also think our house shouldn't look so big/impressive from the outside. I'd rather have it look warm, welcoming and homey. It can be "big" on the inside, but I don't want it to look like it.

Isn't it a beauty?

God might have just made a way...

We fell in love with a piece of land. The problem(s!!!)?

1) It's not for sale
2) It's 45 acres. We were shooting for 10-20 (can we manage that much?)
3) 45 acres x the $ per-acre rate in the area = 2x our budget for land

We have done multiple drive-bys and looked at the satellite views 100 times, but we haven't walked the property yet. We're thinking of writing a letter to the owner asking if he'd be willing to sell. And yes, we could ask him to parcel off a 10-20 acre piece for us. But it's so pretty we don't want to. How can you carve-up perfection?

Except for the budget part.

I have been tracking land sales and talked to a lot of people around here and everything I'm hearing is that it's creeping higher and higher. The 22-acre lot across the street is for sale for 50-100% more than we can pay per acre ($6K per acre more).

So we've been praying. Asking God to PLEASE let us have this property.... but if it's not Your will for us, then please help us to accept it. AND PLEASE make the land You have for us be just as pretty. Strangely, I haven't obsessed much over this property. I think b/c it's so out of OUR realm of possibility that it has to be a God thing. Kind of like when we hadn't found a rental house oh... a MONTH before we moved here, and I really wasn't that stressed about it because there was literally nothing I could do. It was beyond my ability to plan/control things b/c the date was so close. It HAD to be God. And He provided a house better than we could have ever imagined. Seriously, we should show you some of the ones we were considering. ;))

God may be doing it again. This beyond-our-wildest dreams thing. Because this land might actually be exactly the amount we had budgeted for land. Really. Exactly.

I talked to Brian from the tax assessor's office about this piece of land. I've called him about a thousand times about different properties and the county's development plans for the future, etc. He grew up here and knows everyone ("I went to high school with his son and they have moved to Florida so they might be selling soon,", etc.) He didn't know about the owner of this property, but he did talk about land values. While I already knew this, I didn't know the actual dollar amounts were this different for large vs small acreage. These aren't the real prices but this will give you a picture:

10-20 acre parcels of land = $1600/acre
40-50 acre parcels of land = $650/acre

THESE ARE NOT THE REAL VALUES BUT it does show you the big difference in the higher # and the lower. So I was thinking it would be $1600 x 45 ($72,000) when it's more like $650 x 45 ($29,250). So the real value is less than half of what I thought it was! God might be making a way!

And remind me to tell  you about the Stone Story.

UGH. Are we going to BUILD??

We've kept our eye on the real estate market constantly. We get email alerts and check for sale by owner sites and Craigslist. But there's nothing available right now that we like. We haven't found "the one". So we've decided to start considering building. There haven't been any pieces of land we've seen online that we like, either. They're either too wooded (see below; the brown are trees, too) or too far away from things.

So I've been looking at tax maps (satellite view) of our desired area of the county. None of these houses were for sale; we thought we could always write a letter to see if they were interested in selling (giving a sweet, convincing story in the letter about why they should sell their house to us). I drove by one of these properties - you couldn't see much of it from the road, but it looked pretty. A few mailboxes down I noticed a neighbor outside and asked him if he knew of anyone who might want to sell their land/be selling soon. He said no, but that he found his property by driving around and seeing a for sale sign. So I did that. And at the end of the street, a piece of land was for sale.

I drove by - it looked promising!I really don't want to build a house. While Bob and I are alike in many ways and have the same goals in life.... we vary greatly when it comes to home improvement. I want more, he wants less/none. I see possibilities, he doesn't see them or he can see them but it blinded/distracted by the dollar signs he sees dancing in front of them. I don't see this as a fun time for us (unless he gives me complete control and then it would be awesome). And while I LOVE to give opinions/make decisions, I almost feel like building a house would make my brain explode.

Have you ever walked into a store and just been overwhelmed by whatever is around you? I remember that first happening to me when I went into a fabric store. SO.MUCH.FABRIC. Rows and rows and rows. How do you ever pick? I've also felt this in those small boutique stores with cute little trinkets. Because of all the trinkets. You walk in and immediately have to stop. And take a step every thirty seconds as your heads goes up and down while scanning the shelves on the left and right. The last time this happened to me was three weeks ago. In Hobby Lobby. CRAFTS GALORE. Felt, glitter, picture framing, woodworking, painting, sewing, knitting, stickers, puffy crafty ball thingys, foam shapes, scrap booking (and more!) plus tons of (cute) decorating things. But still - too much! That's kind of how I feel with building a house. It would be a DREAM of mine, but also somewhere I'm not sure I want to go.


LAND #1
This piece of land is 22 acres, divided into two 11-acre lots. The cost of one of the lots is what we were hoping to pay TOTAL for land, but the way these are divided, I don't think we'd want to only buy one. It's near the intersection of two roads, one of which is a "kind of" busy country road. We'd put the pasture land along the busier road and the house in the back so there would be "buffers". These two streets are two of my favorite streets in the county. So how perfect would that be?

The yellow lines above show the division of the land and the pasture/tree areas/ One of the lots is just pasture - no trees (the one on the south/bottom) . But the other has pretty trees toward the back - perfect for a house, since I don't love the house-in-the-middle-of-the-field look. It already has fencing, too, so Bob would love that!

View towards the road (from where the house might be)

View towards the road (from where the house might be)

View towards the back. That big oak tree is AWESOME. 

Perfect shape - just like the Connecticut quarter

Looking north towards the property boundary

From the "back" looking towards the road, but there's a little knoll so you can't see the road from back there (privacy!)

Back property line along the trees

So as you can see by all the pictures, we saw the land. Walked it with the owner and asked a lot of questions. We figured out how to make it work price-wise. But.

It just didn't feel right. We weren't as in-love or in-awe as we wanted to be.  So - moving on.