I wish I was joking. This has seriously been such a wild month. Here is the update on the house build, that I didn’t think I would have to give. Let’s go back to the beginning, and listen I know that Andrew and I were not perfect in this. I know we didn’t handle all things to the best of our ability. But here is the timeline as of right now.
Early 2023
We purchased a 5 acre piece of property, that we love! It was exactly what we wanted, and had intentions of sitting on it for a few years before building, to hopefully pay it off. We watched rates rise, and the cost to build rise, and got nervous that we wouldn’t be able to afford to build. So we decided to build and then (hopefully) refinance later. We started reaching out to builders, and were met with a lot of challenges we hadn’t planned for. Then we met “our builder” and he was very seasoned in the trade, we were so happy with his care and attention to detail.
July 2023
We paid our builder $1700 to draw up plans for our forever home. We wanted a 3bd, 3bath, 1 level house, we told him our budget and how it was the biggest priority when building this house. He said our budget was great, and plenty enough to build the house. He designed our house plans and we loved them and he started to gather a price list to quote the entire build. This whole process takes about 8 weeks.
September 2023
We find out we are expecting our third baby. Very much a surprise, we were panicked. We now needed a 4th bedroom, and were concerned about the cost addition to the house, and if we could afford the addition to the house.
October 2023
We are told that the cost to build the 3bd house will be $100K over our budget. WHAT?! We ask him what happened, and he apologized about the miscommunication. We are inwardly freaking out because we now need a bigger house than we originally planned for, and we couldn’t afford the house we just paid to have designed. So we did the incredibly immature thing and ghosted him. I know that we shouldn’t have done that, but we were freaking out and knew we couldn’t build until this baby was born. So we just stopped everything for 9 months. In this time frame our builder does not reach out, he does not check in, he does not call/text us, we did not ignore any messages or calls. Communication from both parties just stops.
June 2024
Baby A arrives and is a happy and healthy baby! We get our feet under us and decide we want to try to break ground this year.
July 2024
We reach out to our builder. We explained everything that had happened, and profusely apologize for ghosting him and ask if he is willing to work with us. We become current on everything with him. He says he would love to work with us and we get back to it right away. He agrees to make us new plans for a 4bd house. New plans are found and a few tweaks are needed, but he agrees to make them and asks for about 4 weeks to get the new draft finished.
August 2024
Our builder asks for a meeting. We are missing some documents for our approval for the bank, we are preparing to list our house, and we still don’t have the house plans. Our builder says that he has been overwhelmed with illness, and his work load and just wanted to explain a few bank things in person. Everything was great and he says he will have house plans ready for us in a couple of weeks, along with the build quote for the house. This was important so we knew what we needed to list our current home for.
September 2024
We buy an RV, list our house, and start preparing to move out so we can build. Still nothing from our builder, but we aren’t in a rush because our house hasn’t sold yet. We knew that if our house sold quickly we would be fine in the RV and weren’t concerned. We had plan A, B, C and D lined up for our living situation if our house sold quickly. It hasn’t sold quickly and in hindsight that has been such a God thing!
October 30, 2024
We get an email from our builder saying he has decided to retire, and doesn’t want to start our house. He apologizes for wasting our time and recommends a new builder. We are obviously upset, but we understand. We ask if we can have our house plans so we can take them to a new builder and not have to start over. He tells us he hasn’t completed them. He never started them. He wasn’t working on a price list.
He then tells us, to have him do the plans we would need to pay him an additional $1700 for plans. (noted: We paid him $1700 in 2023, and we have not received ANY plans. Not even the final plans of the house that was ultimately to big for us to build.) We are confused by the sudden change of this whole process and what we had discussed.
November 2024
We reached out to a few builders and have had decent feedback, but nothing concrete. Hoping to get some quotes and a solid plan for the house build. We have several house showings, and were hoping the election results would boost activity in the market, but it didn’t.
December 2024
With the holidays approaching we have taken our house off the market. We are going to wait to re-list the house in March, and plan to do some small improvements between now and then to hopefully help it sell quicker. We were really concerned about not having a buffer in the RV. We were hoping to move in while it was still “warm” outside, so we could handle any issues a little easier. But now that it is cold every night, if something were to go wrong in the RV we would be forced to get a hotel or move in with family. So it just seems to be safer to wait until we have a buffer in the weather again.
Right now we are meeting with new builders. Our house is off the market and we are hoping to be able to start building this spring. This push in the overall time line stinks, but not much we can do about it. We can see that God is working in this. We know that he will work all of this out for our good in some way or another. This isn’t the first time God has told us to hold our horses. While this is all really frustrating we are glad we are experiencing this now, and not later down the road with more money on the line.
So there is an update for you. Its really wild to me that this is even happening, but we shouldn’t have expected our house build to go smoothly. When do they ever go smoothly!
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