Sweet Home Alabama

It’s more like Sweet Home Texas, and by home, I mean… (are you ready for our big news?!) land!

That’s right, we’re property owners! We have been wanting to post this since our trip to Texas, but we wanted to be sure everything went through first. We made our first payment yesterday, so it’s really official now.

We had no idea we would come back from the States as property owners, and we surprised pretty much everyone with our decision. Though the timing and decision were quick, we couldn’t be happier! To help you all understand how this happened, I’ll try to back track a little.

John and I had been “fantasy house hunting” for quite a while. Whenever we got bored, we would surf the internet in search of potential homes we could buy. Of course none of these homes for sale were something we would actually buy since we wouldn’t be able to move in for a year and a half or so. We just enjoying shopping around and learning what areas we liked, what home features we were looking for, etc.

While we were in San Antonio, John and I decided to drive around and look at some neighborhoods just to add to our knowledge of what we were in the market for. After driving through several neighborhoods, we were both disappointed. We didn’t like anything! We wanted more land than what was available in any of the places we looked, we didn’t like the style of the homes and we didn’t like that most of the homes looked the same/blatantly similar. At this point, John told me he thought I might be more of a country girl at heart. He wanted to drive us out of town a bit, and I went along with it.

We drove about 10 minutes out of town and found a great area with a diverse selection of homes as well as vacant lots. Ooooh, interesting, right? We drove around and looked at a few of the vacant lots and then went home to talk about it. We had to go to Austin the next day, so we had a few days to mull it over and decide if we wanted to go this route. We got back on Sunday and  Monday evening, we had a meeting and signed the paperwork for our land!

That was the most nerve-wracking experience I have had in a long time — if ever! I started panicking and thoughts like “oh my gosh, with a 30-year loan, we’ll owe money until we’re 55” crossed my mind. More panic. In the end, I envisioned someone offering me either the amount we paid for the land in cash or the land. In this scenario, I didn’t hesitate to take the land, so I am sure we made a good decision.

Now for a little bit about our property — it’s 2/3 of an acre on a cul-de-sac and the utilities are below ground (as in we don’t have poles everywhere). It has lots of trees and should be great to build on. I’d give more specifics, but I don’t want to make it too easy for the crazies to find our property! If you want to know more, feel free to email us!

John and I are really looking forward to sitting down with a builder and designing our dream home… but that is a couple years out. Guess we will just have to keep fantasy home shopping!

In front of our land right after we signed the contract...sorry it's so dark. It was late!

Home, the spot of earth supremely blest,
A dearer, sweeter spot than all the rest.
~Robert Montgomery