One Hundred Dollars a Month

I’ve always kind of thought there were three types of home buyers. Those who think they know what they want, those who don’t, and those who only have to look at one property because they know exactly what they are looking for, right out of the gate.

Our First Apartment: The first place we stepped foot in, we rented.

The First Mobile Home: Hadn’t seen the place in years, but my grandparents owned it so we said yes, sight unseen.

The First House: Saw a flyer posted at the bank, looked at the house, bought it.

The House in the Cookie Cutter Development: Saw an ad in real estate magazine, called the realtor, spent 5 minutes looking around, bought the house.

The House with the Hardwood Floors: A neighbor was buying in the same neighborhood, we went to check out the neighborhood, walked through the house, bought it.

The First House We Built: While bringing my husband lunch at work one day, I drove past a new development being built, liked what I saw, had a house built.

The House Where This All Started: My neighbor Chino had mentioned a new development his family was building, we drove out there the next weekend, took a look around at the lots, and had him build us a house.

The HOA House: With less than a month to find a home, and looking for something we could flip in a few years, I walked into the neighborhood, looked in the windows {the property was vacant at the time} called the realtor, made an offer and bought the home.

Our {what I’m hoping will be} Forever Home: I found the listing online and immediately knew…. This was the one. I showed the listing to the HH, and my parents and they loved the home as well. But being experienced home buyers at this point, we all quickly came to the conclusion that the home was:

1. Too big. After all, we were planning on downsizing.

2. Priced more than we were anticipating on spending.

3. The property was going to be a LOT of maintenance. {The HH and my parents were worried about this one, I was not}

And so, even though in my heart I knew, this was the one…. the HH and I kept on looking {online}.

Everyday {and sometimes 3 or 4 times a day} I’d hop online and check for new listings. Then this past fall, the HH and I spent several days driving around different parts of the Northeast, looking for that quintessential New England town we would hope to call home someday.

There was one town in particular I was eager to show him. It was a town The Girl and I had driven through on one of our prior spring break adventures. I had found an amazing old house online that was for sale a few months earlier. The house had since sold, but we were in the area, so my daughter and I decided to drive by the home and through the town just for kicks. And we both fell in love with the area.

Fast forward to this fall and that trip to New England with the HH…

One afternoon we stopped off at a pizza place and ordered a pie to go {to save time, we were town hunting after all and didn’t want to waste 30 minutes sitting down in a restaurant}. Anywho, because my husband refuses to eat food in the car, we put the pizza in the back and drove off to the next town.

Which just happened to be, the town The Girl and I had fallen in love with over a year earlier. AND, the house I thought was the one… it just happened to be in that town as well.

Yada yada yada, we drove up and down the road the house was on like 3 times. SLOWLY looking at all the homes on the street. And finally on our third drive by, we pulled over on the side of the road and parked the car. You know, just so we could get a better look at the house we weren’t going to buy.

Hungry, I got out of the car, grabbed a slice of pizza, sat in the back with my feet hanging out over the licence plate and sent a text to the realtor on the for sale sign asking if it “Would be okay to walk around the property… was it vacant? Would that be alright?”

“No, the house is currently occupied, but you should be able to make an appointment to see the home tomorrow” the realtor texted back.

I quickly told her we wouldn’t be around, and basically let her know what we were up to {driving all over New England looking at different towns} and she said to let her know if/when we wanted to make an appointment to check out the property, she’d be happy to show it to us.

And that was totally fine with us… Because really, we weren’t going to buy this house. We were just looking around at different towns at this point. We hadn’t even decided if we were going to put our house up for sale yet and the place was more {size, price, land} than we were looking for. It made ZERO sense to waste anyone’s time {the homeowner, the realtor, or ours}.

Well, we eventually did put our house up for sale, and it sold like crazy quick. And during those months in between, a house would pop up that we kinda sorta thought was nice and in the general area {but not the exact town we were both pretty much in love with at this point}. However not one of the homes that came up for sale during that time compared to the house we had parked our car in front of, earlier that fall. You know, the one we weren’t going to check out because it was more of a house than we were looking for.

But I’m telling you, that house, it kept circling back to us.

Waiting for us to get on a plane and GO LOOK INSIDE.

And so finally we did.

I think the first words out of my mouth once we were finally inside a good 30 seconds were, “Wow, this isn’t what I was expecting. The house is so….. so, tight. The pictures online make it look so much bigger than how it feels.”

Cozy, or {the British meaning of the word} homely would have been a better word choice than tight…. But this house, this house we waited so long to take a look inside…. it instantly felt like home. I knew, without a doubt, this is where we belonged within the first 2 seconds.

The HH and I ended up checking out the property for a solid 2 HOURS. Then we stopped for a bite to eat before driving back to the hotel to call the realtor and make an offer on the house. Soon after that, I was back out there for the home inspection, this time, with my buddy Heather from Massachusetts in tow to see what she thought of the place. And, of course, she loved it. Finding this house…. It was like coming up for fresh air.

When you know, you know. So follow your heart. Even when things seem like they may be a little out of reach, if you don’t take that chance, you’ll never know.

Have a WONDERFUL Thursday!

~Mavis

More stories in this series:

• The First Apartment
• The First Mobile Home
• The First House
• The First Home in a Suburban Development
• The House with the Hardwood Floors
• The First House We Built
• The House Where This All Started
• The HOA House