We had been in our current house for about 5 years and were looking into where and how we'd build our next home. We first met our Owner Builder Network consultant/project manager, ML, at the Dallas Home and Garden show a little over a year ago and started looking into what it was all about. We met with him at their office in Arlington and really liked what they had to offer (If you don't know anything about them, definitely check out their website). They basically give you all the resources and guidance you need to build your own home, while cutting out the cost of a builder, but...you have to do all the things a builder would do, get bids, schedule contractors, make sure work gets done right, on time etc. Sounds great right? We thought so. But first we needed a place to build this so-called dream home...
We had already been searching for land for years...literally years. We are quite picky. We wanted to be close to important things (like work and shopping), but also have enough space and the ability to build a (BIG) shop without HOA restrictions that most neighborhoods these days have - I'll let you decide which of us wanted each of those things. In March of this year, we finally found what we had been waiting for. I'm pretty sure I contacted the selling realtor for the lot within hours of the posting (March 11) and drove out to check it out the same day. It was located on 6 acres that the owner had decided to subdivide into 3 separate, 2 acre lots. One of the lots already had an older home on it, and the other two were empty. We wanted lot 3 and it was just about perfect. No building restrictions, 5 mins away from the mall in Fairview/Allen. What more could you ask for? :)
The realtor mentioned that they were accepting contracts, but since the property was being subdivided through the city's process, we would not be able to close on it for a few months. At this point, we had zero design plans, just lots of ideas...so the delay would not be an issue. On March 26th, we met with the realtor, signed our contract and the seller signed the following day, woohoo! That required a photo of the pending sign.
A few weeks later, we had our financing arranged and from there, we waited. First the re-platting had to go through the town's planning and zoning commission for their approval (May 10th-approved!), and the on to the "Town Council" for further approvals (June 5th-APPROVED!). We finally had a lot to buy, that actually existed according to the city. Then the seller decided he wanted to go out of town, so we extended our expecting close date to July. Finally, on June 28th we were able to close and purchase our very first lot. After buying our first house in 2006, it was kind of odd to go through all of those signing papers again, but this time you walk away without keys and without being able to move in...any time soon. But there we were, with this beautiful piece of 2 acre property, trying to figure out what in the world we were going to do with it.
For the next post, get ready for an overview of our experience so far with the whole design process...hold on to your hats.
A few pictures from October -
View from the back of the property -
Finally got a pic of us with our SOLD sign. : ) It is December though, so not as pretty as it looked then.
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