And On We Go...

Note: Not our house at right. I wish. Ideally the house we build will look similar to this.

We eventually gave up on selling the house. We decided to rent it instead. Despite being listed in various places for sale, we had gotten a number of emails asking if we'd be willing to rent it out. So we knew there was a market. We (well, I) finally realized that if we rented it, we'd cover our mortgage, and I also learned that the bank would look at that as a wash in terms of loaning us money for a construction loan. So, we decided to try to rent it.

We had a LOT of interest. Lots of calls, we showed it to a number of people and families. While there was some continued interest, no one made the commitment. Until last month. We had one couple take a tour. I could tell that they were not only ready to move but that they were ready to move in to our place. They were very excited and clear, and sure enough, the next day they filled out a rental application. Fast forward to 9 days later and the place was officially theirs. So as of April 1 this year, our place was rented out!

Now we can focus on moving forward, for the first time in a looong time. I've been working on our house plans again. I'll post what I have soon, but it isn't easy. The program I use (Punch) doesn't have good options for exporting to things like .jpgs and such. So to post photos, I have to print out each floor separately (which isn't easy in itself), then scan them in. There has to be an easier way, but I haven't found it.

Anyway, Ed has a good friend who drafts houses for a living, so he might help us out there. Then we can interview some builders (again), and figure out if we can afford to build this thing! It's a great time to build, and the per square foot cost has gone way down. Let's hope it has gone down enough.