Photo by @traindelosreyes
Yes, we are building our first home! A decision that may seem to have happened rather quickly was actually in the works for a while. When we first moved to Florida in February 2021, we dabbled with the idea of purchasing a house. Accustomed to the city lifestyle and apartment living, I was surprised at how much I even wanted a home. But we had to stop before getting ahead of ourselves. We were new to Florida, we weren't familiar with our new town, and we wanted to be confident in our bones that, yes, this would be where we raise our family. So we put the house search on hold for a couple of months. As more and more homes for sale and new builds would come up, we revisited the idea in April.
I went with our realtor to look at model homes, but nothing felt like home. I'd walk into a house, and I wouldn't feel that immediate connection. While the homes I saw were all beautiful, none felt like the one for our family. Each house I'd tour, I'd ask myself these questions:
- How does it feel to enter this home?
- Could I imagine Mason running around this space?
- Where will Harvey's bed go?
- Is it in our budget?
- For a resale: What renovations would be a must? How long would these take/cost?
- For a new build: What would it cost to make this *our* home?
B and I discussed everything; the lifestyle we envision for our family, our finances, what kind of home we would like to live in long-term, our timeline for getting the home we love, etc. We decided then to hold off the house search again. And then a few more months went by. Over those few months, we talked about the kind of house we wanted. I was leaning more towards a new build. Why? So that we could have it created the way we want it from the beginning, all by the builder, and hopefully just have to do cosmetic changes over the years if we desire. B saw my point, and also thought finding a modern resale that wouldn't need too many renovations would also work. We looked at resales and models on Zillow and other home finding sites, but again, nothing truly sparked our interest.
Then came the first weekend in November, it was November 6th to be exact. B and I were standing in the kitchen when he turned to me and asked, "What do you think about a townhouse?" We had entertained the idea of a townhouse before but never got around to doing research or going to tour any. We had long known by November that this is where we wanted to raise our family. I replied, "Hmm...we haven't really looked into them. But let's!" And we started looking at some virtual tours and photos of townhome communities. We found one in particular that was within our budget, had the number of bedrooms/bathrooms, and was for a new build. We contacted our realtor and let them know that we wanted to see the townhomes in person. Our tour was scheduled for the following day.
When we went to see the townhomes, we informed the leasing agent that we wanted a 3+ bedroom. He was finishing up with a client and recommended we look at the 2 bedroom model townhouse in the meantime. After, he said he would take us into the 3+ bedroom townhomes. Well, we walked into the 2 bedroom townhome - and I kid you not - as soon as I stepped foot in this house, I felt it: I felt home. We showed ourselves around the house with the help of our realtor, discussing the quality, the design, the cost, etc. The more we talked and toured the home, the more I already saw us living there. I looked at B, and I knew he felt the same. As our realtor stepped out to check with the leasing agent, I told B, "This is the one. This is home." He couldn't agree more.
After the leasing agent gave us the official and detailed tour of the 2 bedroom house, he took us to see the 3+ bedroom homes. Again, these were lovely houses, but I didn't feel at home in them. We were surprised at how we initially went in thinking we wanted one house but walked out, putting a deposit down on another. We knew to our cores that it was the best house for our family. Over the next few weeks, we were approved, signed a bunch of paperwork, and set up our design appointment! I'll get to that in the next post. It's a lot.
I'm so glad to finally be sharing this with you! I'll be posting some updates on my Instagram and detailing more about our build process here on my blog. Thank you so much for reading!