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.