Dream Home

 The moment Michael and I first saw our house, we knew it was the right one for us. We had been looking in a certain area, along a specific bus route, for nearly a year. The reason this particular bus route was so desirable, was that the buses would get onto Interstate 5 express lanes, and take you directly downtown with few or no stops. That way, the commute would actually be only around 10 or 15 minutes. So even though we would be living nearly 7 miles away from Michael's work, he could actually get there faster than if we lived a half mile away (due to the vagaries of Seattle's public transportation network). In any case, we looked on this real estate website for about a year, when something finally popped up in the late summer of 2008.

This house could not have been more perfect. It had a big, level lot, 3 bedrooms, and an attached two car garage (something quite rare in our neighborhood!). It had been updated recently and was in great shape. It wasn't perfect. The back yard was small, there wasn't a lot of storage, and it was on a hill, over looking a very busy, main thoroughfare. This last point was both its main appeal as well as one of its greatest downsides. It just so happened that this busy thoroughfare was the main route the buses took to get to Interstate 5. In addition, there was a bus stop, directly down the hill, accessed by a staircase, that Michael could use to get to work in the morning. So essentially, his only commute was these stairs and a very short bus ride. For someone who wanted to avoid a long commute, this was the ideal location!

The downside to living above this busy road however, was the noise. Particularly the ambulances, police vehicles and fire trucks that raced down the street, sirens blaring, several times a day. Add to that honking horns, blasting bass speakers, squealing brakes on trucks, screeching tires, the occasional accident and pedestrians yelling,  and that made for some unpleasant noise both in the house and especially in the backyard. However the commute was so good, that we were willing to overlook the road noise for the sake of convenience. We lived happily in this house until the summer of 2012, when our son William was born. Up until this point, we naively thought that we would likely live in this house for many years to come. At least for another 10 years we thought. Then the baby came and changed our perspective entirely.

The first thing we noticed was the road noise. We had learned to tune it out and ignore it, but once you are trying to get a sleeping baby to stay asleep, suddenly any noise that might wake that baby, becomes a much bigger deal. And fire trucks blasting horns and sirens so loud that you could hear them a mile away, was a problem. The other issue was space in the house. We had severely underestimated just how much crap you have to accumlate when you bring a baby into the house. Our spacious living room was soon overflowing with a bouncy seat, swing, porta crib, activity mat, toy box, jumperoo, rocking chair, nursing pillows, you name it, we had it. The nursery was no better and now every room in the house was jam packed with nearly zero storage. We started to think about the future and the possibility of more kids, and we couldn't fathom how we would fit everyone in very easily. Add to this the small back yard and hilly terrain (not great for stroller rides), and this house didn't sparkle as much as it first had. It was time to look for suitable alternatives.

Unfortunately we apparently have expensive tastes, and to find a house that met all of our 'must have' requirements, meant that we would have to spend a ridiculous amount of money. Still, I kept thinking that given enough time, surely something reasonable would pop up. Even if significant remodeling was required, we wouldn't rule it out. Months and months dragged on and nothing became available. Either the houses were in a great location but didn't have the other features we wanted, or had the features but were too expensive or in the wrong area. Finally Michael hit upon the idea of building our own house. I immediately dismissed this as crazy. Surely there was no way we could afford that . . . right?

So I called more than a dozen builders. Oddly most wouldn't talk to me or even return my calls. I found it so strange that in the middle of a recession, builders would turn down an opportunity to build a house! At any rate, I did end up talking to a few (maybe half a dozen), and was surprised to learn that building our own might be affordable after all! Mainly it was an issue of whether we could find either an empty lot or a house on a lot of sufficient size, in the right area, and for as cheap as we could. There wasn't a lot on the market, so we decided to do the next best thing. We identified lots in the neighborhood that we would want to live in, that were of adequate size, and that had very small, old houses on them (so likely to sell cheaply). We figured out how much money we would be willing to pay for each of these lots, then we sent a letter to the owners of said lots, basically asking them if they would be willing to sell some time in the future, for the amount specified. We waited and waited and in the end, we only heard back from a couple of them. One guy said he would consider it, maybe. And another lady said that she was planning on living there for many more years. So all in all, it looked like we were at a dead end. The only option was to keep waiting.


Fortunately, waiting for a house to come up wasn't as bad as it could have been, since we already were living in a suitably nice house. No, it wasn't perfect, but perfectly adequate for us at the moment. And we figured, even if we had to spend a few more years here, the space would be limited, but we could make it work! Then, just when we'd made some peace with staying put for awhile, the heavens parted, angels sang, and one of the homes that we had sent a letter to, came on the market! We were shocked that we had never heard back from the owner, especially since the price they were asking was way below what we had offered them in our letter! The only down side was that it was being sold as a short sale, which are notoriously tricky and are anything but short. This didn't deter us however and we immediately called our agent to get the process started.

Our agent informed us that they would be accepting offers at the end of the next week, so we spent that week thinking about what the value of the land seemed to be in this market and what the value was to us personally. In the end we came up with a strong offer that we were very comfortable with. Once the final offer was submitted, we had about a half day of nail biting before we found out who had won. Obviously since I am writing this post, we won! What we didn't realize was that a long, tedious process had only just begun.

Normally when you buy a house, you generally only have to wait about a month to close and get keys. We had won the bidding war in early June, and by the end of September, we were no closer to owning this house than we had been earlier in the summer. There were some complicating factors, and a LOT of back and forth between us and the bank, but basically it boiled down to the fact that the house was owned by two different banks, and one of the banks did not really want to sell it to us. We had to convince them to (or rather our agents did). Finally, at the beginning of October, we started to hear rumors that a decision might be made, maybe, in a few weeks time. Given that we had been dealing with these banks and their notoriously glacial pace for the entire summer, we were skeptical at best that any decision would ever be made, let alone that we would be able to actually buy this house!

Finally, on the 25th of October, we found out that the bank was indeed going to allow us to buy the house, and that it had to close by the 30th. This is a much shorter time frame than most sales (5 vs 30 days), and we now started to worry that the original owners would not be able to move out in time. Needless to say, after such a long wait, we were skeptical until the very end, that the house would actually be ours. Nevertheless, we made preparations. We had long ago selected a builder and a floor plan, so now we finalized our list of customizations, began to look into permitting and demolition as well as financing. On the night of October 29th, we signed the papers to finalize the sale, and completed the final walk through. In the end, it was hard to believe that the house was ours at last. To be honest, after all of the back and forth negotiating with the bank, for them to just approve the sale like that, felt anticlimactic. I expected them to ask for more money, or to just refuse us outright. It was a blessed relief, but also a surprise that they just gave in. Not that we are complaining! We ended up giving the original owners a few extra days to move out, since they had gotten such short notice, but they were out by the end of the week.

Now that this sale is behind us, we can experience the fun of building a new house! The next steps are to line up financing, get the architect to plan the customizations we want, test the house for asbestos (this must be done before demo), get permits from the city of Seattle, demolish the existing house, then start building. We think the entire process will take somewhere in the nine to twelve month range. So with any luck, we will be able to move in next fall! Over the next year, I will post regular updates as we progress through the building process. Now that we are through the most difficult part (fingers crossed), we hope the next phase will be a lot more fun and relatively stress free. I can dream right? HA! Below is the picture of the house we intend to build. Wish us luck!