September 9, 2021
House Hunting 102 – Searching
Searching… They say the hardest part of doing something you really want is waiting and planning. They might be right.
We keep getting to the search part.
We are looking for land or a house on land within 10 minutes of I95 in St John’s County, Florida. The hard part is our budget isn’t high. I just want a place my kids can run free, have their pets, explore, we can have eight or ten cars (family lol) over without bothering anyone else, etc.
I’d love old Florida land like property with a touch of wetlands that no one can ever mess up. We are twenty years in and back to our original dream of land and an old house to redo or land and build our own from the ground up.
It feels disheartening sometimes when I realize that we “wasted” (really just rented lol) years because some mortgage company took a risk and we weren’t able to pay the rest in full. I can’t look at it as wasted, though. I have to realize it was just another step. We can never go backwards in time, always forward. We learn from mistakes and teach others to avoid the pits we fell into.
I choose to look at the positive! I choose to move forward. We saved, started the first one. We saved, we were able to do almost all of our business investments in cash (should have paid off house instead and ran the business on loans, but didn’t understand that the only non-forgibable loans are student and home loans lol, lesson learned to pass along), we can, are, and will save again.
I’m a saver by nature. I run on thriftiness. I carpool to save gas, Louis can do all maintenance on our vehicles except for major rebuilds (did to both to avoid new vehicle payments), the one daughter who has a car has one paid in full, we stretch food so that is a minimal expense (no eating out, lots of grown foods ourselves, lots of beans and rice or spaghetti dinners, canning, leftovers, bulk cooking, etc.), we get clothes and shoes from hand-me-down bags (I usually only buy underwear and socks new), and our extracurricular activities are limited to those places family works for.
My kids even say, I’m a scrooge.
So now, we have a pre-approval! (I know, I shouldn’t be excited just yet.) We can’t do a construction loan just yet, but they said a new home loan (builder has to sell it “done”).
If dreams happen, then we could find a builder willing to build on a rural property with total cost was than 265000 and a simple floor plan
Simple. (Except my pantry is huge 😂)
In our search, most homes have huge oversized bedrooms and stop at 3. It’s tough to find one with 6 bedrooms… and they’d still be sharing! (That’s because I can’t separate some duos even if I wanted to.)
We have prayed.
Like everything in my life, I have chosen to give the sum nd total of it to God and He will direct us where He wants and we will move on from there. If that means awesome new build with exactly what we want small and simple or a 700sqft existing 2br/1ba that we add on to… We are waiting and praying.
Thank you for praying and reading our journey!
~Nancy Tart