A Buyer's Market Threatens Our Happy Home

It was bound to happen. I knew it would. Justin feared it would. And finally it did. What, you may ask? The house got just finished enough and just comfortable enough. That's what happened. That alone might have been fine if I hadn't had some spare time to surf the web ... and that's when it really happened. "Nice home for sale on 10 acres. Move in ready, price reduced, bring your horses!" Yep. That's what happened, but now what do we do about it? I can't take it back and pretend I didn't read the ad, get the MLS info and go visit it twice. All in two days. Now the over thinking begins.

You might say, "but didn't you JUST move into your house?" And if you said that you wouldn't be alone, that's what everyone has said so far. The answer is complicated. We didn't JUST move in. Its been 2 1/2 years. We also knew this wouldn't be our final home. It was never enough land to stay forever. And this house was built without the expectation of kids or horses as residents, and now we have two of each. The rationalization I use in my head for this move is that no matter how much money we dump into this house we'll never be able to make the land any larger and even with a father as an architect its gonna be tough to get this house any bigger than 2200 sqft.

What complicated matters more is that this 'new' house isn't perfect. Granted, the location is fabulous and it has established pastures. Super barn, dog runs, nice deck, full brick sided with a 3 car garage, private road; all at 40k below tax assessment. Nice. But if you look closer at the house things start to unravel a bit. There is no cross fencing or arena, and to say that the interior is dated would be a grave disservice to other houses which have been called dated. This beast wasn't even nice when it was new. Think - fake marbling everywhere, shiny gold everything, pale pink wood, all white walls, pale blue carpet (with pee stains) , lots of cheap stained glass, fowl decorating the light fixtures ... getting the picture? Its like Golden Girls meets bad 1980's RV.

To move into a fixer upper in our current condition would be hard, there is already no time in the day. And if we found the time, could we afford it anyway? This home would be double the mortgage which means little left for improvements. And supposing the money works out, can I really leave our house? This is the land I grew up on and we have family within walking distance. We picked every item in this house, my father did the floor plan and we saw it built from the ground up by one of our closest friends. And maybe the best of all, it doesn't make us victims of Americanism.

What do I mean by Americanism? Short answer: living on credit in order to buy things that are bigger, newer, faster, shinier and fancier than are really needed. Our current home is nice, I think. We like it here. And it modest. We can afford to go out when we want, shop when we want or make updates and improvements if we see fit. It's as maintenance free as a home can be expected to be and truth be told we do all manage to fit just fine.

Oh, the decisions. It's hard to tell how this one will shake out. No matter what happens I will have regrets. No matter what happens I will have a nice home. So the question remains: will the current buyer's market threaten to end the nearly three year run we've had in this happy home?

... and because I have been told I don't say it enough and probably don't put it in my blog - I love my husband. He's great.

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