I miss Bob Barker.

I mentioned that the real estate market went crazy this winter/spring, right?  The prices didn't so much gradually creep up as they shot up overnight and kept climbing.  Homes don't last more than a day or two on the market before they go to "pending" status.  Builders are snatching up lots left and right, putting down cash offers which are attractive to sellers as they can close faster with less risk of default.  We were definitely NOT putting in a cash offer so we were already at a disadvantage in the market.

Generally there are three options in the GOOF area (Garden Oaks-Oak Forest):

1) New, larger, two-story homes done by builders with pre-picked models where buyers can pick the final finishes.  Price rating: $$$$$

2) Older, 1950s/1960s ranch-style, single-story homes which have had some remodel, renovation and/or additions. Sometimes the layouts are odd from the additions but they are generally nice homes.  Price rating: $$$

3) Older homes with no or little renovation that are being sold at "lot" value.  Price rating: $$ and climbing

We were targeting that third category, as we planned to tear down the old home and build to our taste and budget - our budget being max $$$$, relatively speaking.  

Besides being able to design to our functionality, the benefit to custom building is that you can control the cost better.  For us, the budget is the budget, so whatever is eaten up in the lot cost decides the house budget.  There is obviously a reasonable size range and design level that we have to stay in based on comparable homes and resale opportunities later, so that is a large factor in limiting that lot price maximum.  If you are willing to do a lot of research on details and make most decisions regarding design and amenities before you even have a construction contract, you can manage the cost and expectations better (famous last words) throughout the construction process.

When we became more serious about the Oak Forest neighborhood, we casually started playing our hand in the offer game.  We lost twice, not offering very aggressively and trying to get a feel for what the price market was like.  Frankly, the idea of a bidding war sickened me.  The options were OK, maybe good even but not great, and I think we weren't quite ready to be serious about it.

A couple of weeks ago, a Wednesday afternoon I was working from home, I spotted a listing on HAR that I had not seen previously that day. I have been stalking HAR relentlessly so it doesn't take long for me to notice new posts.  I called Andrew, no answer, he was in a meeting.  So I called our builder and told him about the listing.  He asked if I wanted to offer, I said yes, I would tell Andrew when he got out of his meeting.

Who does that, right?  Who makes major financial decisions about their future home without consulting their husband?

In my defense, I knew Andrew would be on board with this one.  It was a larger corner lot, with great access to the park and schools, zoned to Lilly's elementary school in the exact area we liked most.  The lot was on a street name I liked and the address had the number 13 (Andrew's lucky number) in it so I took it as a sign (I subscribe to convenient superstitions).  For the record, Andrew was on board and was excited about the prospect.

The home went on the market Wednesday afternoon, we submitted our offer on Wednesday night, sight unseen.  We did however drive by that night to make sure the listing wasn't misleading.  Thursday morning the seller's agent asked us for a bank pre-qual letter, which we had, so we sent it over.  In the time it took for us to receive the request and send it over (maybe an hour?), more offers poured in.

Great.  Now we go to bidding war.

The seller's agent asks all bidders to submit the best and final offer through the weekend and we would find out who won on Monday.  Time for strategy.  This is a blind bid, we know nothing about the other bidders or how fast the seller wants to close, and we need to decide how bad we want this lot.  At this point, Andrew and I were starting to picture our life in this house, in this location, so we don't want to lose by a tiny margin but also don't want to blow the other offers away.  It is The Price is Right up in here.  Welcome to the realities of the Houston real estate market in 2014!

We deliberate all the way through Friday, going back and forth on numbers, come up with a competitive and what we think is generous offer given the market (with a number four as one of the digits because fours are lucky for home buying, yes, more wack family superstitions), and fingers crossed, submitted it on Friday the 13th.  We held our breath the entire weekend.

On Monday morning, Andrew and I were on the phone when our builder called and Andrew quickly texted me that we got the lot.  A familiar feeling of joy and panic set in.  We are financially committed.

Holy crap.  We are actually going to do this.  We are going to leave the house and neighborhood we love and move to Oak Forest.  But what are we going to live in?

At it again

Here we are, 3 years after we moved into the house that we designed and built, our baby, our crazy project... 

And we're doing it again.

Let me back up a year.

Last summer, two weeks after giving birth to our son, we were at the neighborhood park letting Lilly burn off some energy while our newborn was strapped to me sleeping.  I was watching my husband play with Lilly.  All the kids were a couple years younger than her at least.  When Andrew took a break and walked over to where I was sweating with a warm newborn on my chest in the summer evening heat, I looked at him and said "what are we doing??"  He looked at me for more information on where I was going with this.

Me: "Why do we live here?"

A: ....

Me: "We wanted that walkable life style right? How does that work for us right now?  We live right next to bars and restaurants we don't go to anymore."

A: "You're right."

(Wow, not what I thought he was going to say, so let's save that for posterity, shall we?)

Maybe it was partly the hormones, but after having a second child, something in me, something in us, switched on (or off if you like).  I finally realized that we were a legitimate family, not the couple with a kid who still got to act like they were kid-free some of the time.  Going from one to two was a huge shift for us.  The sheer logistics of that expansion were (and still are) exhausting us.  We needed help, and we are lucky to have our parents here to support us and provide those extra hands for help.  

But after Lilly, I learned how much easier, how much more enjoyable that chaotic routine can be when you have a community (physically) around you for support as well. The first time around we tried to do and manage everything ourselves, partially because we didn't know any better and partially because we just barely could and maintain some sort of adult life.  With two kids, I wanted to have other children around to play with in the neighborhood, other parents around to talk to, BBQ with - the whole tv-sitcom-walk-in-your-back-door-unannounced community.

This shift kind of came as a shock to even myself, let alone our family and friends.  The reality is that our neighborhood is great for singles, young couples, even very young families and empty-nesters, but when the kids get past the toddler stage, it gets dicier.

The local school system is it's own challenge, but in our neighborhood especially it is extra challenging.  Without boring you of the details of testing and lotteries and the complete cluster that process is within HISD, we survived it (barely), but were reinforced throughout that process that it was time to move.

So last fall we started casually trolling HAR.com for areas with good schools.  Would we build?  Would we buy?  Where would we go?  How far out of the city could we live and maintain sanity?  More importantly, what could we afford?

About that time, the real estate market started to increase at a rapid pace, and in the past six months, it has gone completely nuts in Houston.  Listings don't last more than a couple days and the bidding wars in certain areas are ruthless.  Great for sellers, not-so-great for buyers.  I have become a HAR expert at this point and have spent an embarrassing amount of time on that app.

When we were trying to narrow down the neighborhood to search, there were a lot of *discussions* around this topic - we have lived in Midtown/Montrose for 9 years, have loved it.  Where would we equally love it just as much?  

The first instinct was The Heights, where we have many friends, it's a great neighborhood with lots of families and great access to downtown and Galleria area (our work locations).  I was having a hard time figuring out how we could be happy after getting to build our (realistic) dream home going to a tiny bungalow on a small lot eating spam sandwiches for eternity.  In the "good school" areas, it was expensive, competitive and old (in our price range at least, which is not bad, but means more $$$ for upgrades/renovations which means now those spam sandwiches are more like mustard-only sandwiches).  Then we branched out into various areas around town, even looking as far as Sugarland (I know! So far for us!), but we started gravitating towards the Oak Forest/Garden Oaks area.  It seemed like the right compromise for our family.  We drove around several times, taking in the feel of the neighborhood, checking out the schools and local stops,
talking to people about the area and it began to grow on us.

Needless to say, when Lilly got into the magnet elementary school program there, we took it as a sign and the search was exclusively in that area, and it was intense now.  We wanted to avoid the whole lottery mess when Gabe went to school if we could so school zoning was critical.  We had been talking to our builder (same team as last time!) and apparently there are a lot of people like us, thinking the same thing, and moving to the area.  Real estate had gone crazy between November and April and we started stressing big time.  Could we even still afford to live in that area?

Do we renovate something existing?  Honestly that seemed a lot harder than building from scratch (kudos to all those who have patience for remodels!).  We couldn't comfortably afford the way the new builds were going and couldn't find anything we even 70% loved at any close-to-affordable price point any ways. 

Be warned: This is what happens when you custom build and want to move again.  You become a total snob and nothing existing seems right and functional the way YOU want it.  This is a totally annoying byproduct of this process.  

Needless to say, Andrew wanted to build the whole time - Dude is addicted to it and had the bug big time.  So once we went to enough open houses, and had been frustrated enough times, I agreed and gave in.  We told our builder the plan, and off we go...kind of.