"Trust the timing of your life. Trust your journey."
Over the past few days, I’ve been sad in the pettiest “first world probs” type of way. To be honest, it feels ridiculous for me to even admit how sad I've felt over something so privileged... However, my feelings have been strong over a house that recently came on the market that my husband and I really thought would be our forever home. We’ve lived in our current house - our “starter home” - for ten years now, and we’ve discussed the possibility of moving countess times over the past decade. Every time we have these discussions, it’s a daydream scenario, and with both of us having strong backgrounds in real estate, it complicates things.
I am a licensed Realtor and former bank lending associate with appraisal certifications, and my husband is a real estate entrepreneur and builder. We have seen a LOT of real estate over the years and we are incredibly picky and opinionated on what we would consider valid options for our “forever home.” For the past five of the ten years that we have lived in our “starter home,” we have had discussions about our next and final move.
We have walked through houses on the market and we have considered building our own home for several years now. When we always seem to find ourselves left uninspired and disappointed with our options, we end up turning back to our own home and renovating it in some way to reflect our tastes and needs. This year, in our tenth year in this home, we came to a final realization that we have renovated almost every aspect of this home and that maybe what we ultimately need and desire from a home can’t quite happen here.
On a random February afternoon, I received a text from my husband with a link to a home that was just listed on the market in our small town. I very quickly found myself with mixed emotions, because this particular house had been in my sights since the day we bought our “starter home” over a decade ago. This house is right around the corner from ours and was unique in that, similar to ours, it also had a large lot with woods in the back yard, had a little more land than we have, and had so much room for growth and improvement. My husband and I have ten years’ worth of memories walking up and down the road in front of this particular house, day dreaming about how, if it were to go on the market, it would become our forever home - no question.
We walked through the home initially as soon as we learned that it was on the market, and we were ultimately confused as to the list price of the home as it didn’t seem to be in line with what we believed to be the market value. We decided to give it a month and then walked through a second time, giving serious consideration to the work that we would need to put into the house to make it our own, as well as what we felt was a reasonable market value. We made our offer, and I submitted a heartfelt letter with well-researched supporting documentation to the sellers. Ultimately, a second offer came in shortly after and we did not end up getting the house.
My initial devastation over the “loss” of this house was pretty great, and my husband was nothing but supportive when I had a few teary-eyed breakdowns over it. I would like to consider myself a pretty rational person, and my husband would agree that I am always calculated, thoughtful, and very particular. We adore our neighborhood and the lot that we live on, but we never intended for our current house to be our forever home. The fact that we found a house that we both could agree on within our own beloved neighborhood, even though it didn’t have all of the updates and finishes that we’d require on the inside, but had the perfect bones, structure, and location - guys, we can see the back of this house from the front of our current house, which is ultimately torture when we have had to see and think about it daily - was enough for us to fall hook, line, and sinker.
So, where do we go from here? We have decided that, first and foremost, we are so fortunate to even be in the situation that we are in currently. The house that just wasn’t meant to be has officially pushed us into the market to find our forever home. We are now thoroughly digging in to plans to build our own dream home and are actively searching for land. We have also taken time to slow down and be more grateful for what we have now, because the work we have put into our “starter home” is actually astounding when you compare the before and after photos. We are also reminding ourselves that no matter what house we live in, it will be filled with laughter and love, and that a house will never determine the happiness that fills our family. We will continue to keep our eyes and hearts open and be filled with dreams and hope that our forever home is just around the corner.