Alright, so this post has been a LOOONG time coming, but it’s finally here! With so much excitement, stress, BUT yet so much happiness writing these words, I am so happy to say WE ARE BUYING OUR FIRST HOME!!!
June 14th
July 7th
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September 14th
If you haven’t yet already read in my Life Update post or have seen on my IG feed/stories, we went into contract in purchasing our home back in June! Which is a BIG reason why I’ve been so MIA lately.
So much has happened within these last couple of months, but being able to watch our home grow every week (yes, we are those people that go there every week to take weekly pictures, LOL) is just amazing. And, since we are having it build from ground up, our “expecting” closing date was suppose to be 12/31/19, but are now being told it will be done at the end of November. What an awesome Christmas gift right!?!
But let me be the first to say that this whole home buying process has been quite an adventure. This WHOLE process of wanting to purchase a home, working on our credit, saving, and then finding the right home for us, has been a 2 year process. Yes, you read that right…. 2 years!
So, it all started when my sister wanted to look at home models. It wasn’t until then when my husband and I knew that we wanted this.. we wanted to be homeowners and wanted more of a stable home with our family. Before our main priority was focusing on traveling and private schooling for our girls. But, we knew that renting homes/town homes wasn’t our life anymore. So after many many months of looking at home models, we decided to focus on paying off debt, building our credit, and saving money.
Within the two years our search continued. I can say we’ve visited damn near every new community in Las Vegas and in Henderson. We were also looking into purchasing an older home or fairly new home too. We were definitely open minded, at the beginning.
What made us want to purchase a brand new home?
After months and month of looking online at homes that were a few years old already, we just couldn’t find something that both my husband and I really loved. There was something always wrong with the home… weather it was the backyard not being big enough, remodeling that needed to be done, we didn’t like the layout of the home, or the price was way too high for an older home. We felt like the older homes were being sold at nearly the same cost as building a BRAND NEW home from ground up. Which is why we decided to build from ground up. We new doing this… 1. the house will be brand new 2. it will be a home we obviously love 3. we won’t have to do any major remodeling 4. it’ll have a layout that we love.
So, with that decision already made, we new then we just needed to find OUR HOME… Then March 2019 came, and a brand new community opened. We visited it, and immediately fell in love with one of the home models… It was just a home that felt right. It was a home that I could see my family living in for a VERY long time. It was a home that I can see many many family gatherings and dinners being held at. It just felt like HOME! However, there was 1 big obstacle standing in our way….. the lot!
It was VERY VERY important to my husband and I that we DID NOT want a neighbor behind us. Taking the time and visiting practically every home model here in Vegas, made us realize that when you have neighbors right beside and behind you, you practically get NO PRIVACY at all. From the second floor you can see everything in your backyard… and the right side of your neighbors backyard… the left side of the neighbors backyard… and well part of the back side of your neighbors backyard too. It was awful… and we just didn’t want that. We know that our backyard will be used a lot, and with us having 2 girls, we left that it was extremely important to us to not have any neighbors behind us, to give us a little bit more privacy. Another important factor was how our backyard was facing. We wanted the front of our home facing west and the backyard facing east. Might sound silly why we want it that way, but because we will be using the backyard a lot, with the backyard facing west, the sun will set in the backyard mid afternoon, not making it as hot back there.
So, we waited……. we waited in hopes that a lot with the front of the home facing west and backyard facing east with NO neighbors directly behind us… will open up. 3 months later… and no new lots were released.
But then, our AMAZING sales associate that works with the builder, new how much we loved the home. She seen us visit the home model.. time and time again, and new that if she doesn’t at least try and see if they can release a lot to us, that we may possibly go with another builder if we found a home we loved. So she pulled some strings and made it happen….
June 17th is when we went into contract, and when things got really real! I remember that day like it was yesterday. When our sales associate called us, she left a voicemail screaming “I GOT YOU THE LOT, CALL ME NOW“! We instantly called and then it immediately hit my husband and I “oh SH*T it’s real”! She told us to come into the office immediately so she can go over paperwork with us, so that way they can put that lot being already SOLD. I remember the car ride going there, I asked my husband “are we making the right decision” HAHAHA… all the feels were hitting us at once. It was so fast. We honestly weren’t mentally prepared for this at all. But, when we got there, we got so excited! Then the feeling again of “it’s real.. it’s really real”!
About 2 weeks after signing our contract, we had an appointment with the design center. And of course all the questions… what did we want in our home? How much in upgrades were we willing to spend or add onto our home loan? What was truly important to us that was a MUST? Again…. all the feels and all the questions.
Well, one thing that we new, we had a budget and we primarily new what we wanted. Which helped out A LOT! Here are a few things we added in upgrades….
- upgraded our railing at the staircase
- upgraded the padding to foam for upstairs and stairs
- electrician add ons
- upgraded our kitchen sink
There were a few more things that I wanted to upgrade, but when you think of the cost they are charging to how much it will truly be once you pay off the home, just wasn’t realistic for us to add those upgrades into our home loan. So, we are doing a lot of things ourselves and paying upfront… for instance our garage door opener. Things of that nature, we did not upgrade and add onto our home loan.
A few other things we are doing ourselves….flooring. Probably in about a year or 2, we are going to rip out all of the carpet and tile that is downstairs (we did not upgrade anything, and stuck with everything standard) and will have it all changed out to wood vinyl flooring. As far as upstairs, we did upgrade the padding to foam because we plan to keep the carpet for a few years… aprox 5 or so years from now until we need to change it out to another carpet again. So, hopefully we can keep up with the carpet for that long (fingers crossed). We are also having our kitchen cabinets painted (we got standard as well). Our cabinets are going to be a brown maple color and we want white. So, we will have that done as well. Another thing we saved on was having our house painted a different color inside or choosing a different base. We choose the basic standard flat white paint, and once we get the house the first thing we are doing will be re-painting the house with an eggshell/semi-gloss paint. So those are just a few things we have planned.
Where are we staying at now?
Right when we went into contract, we made the decision to break the lease of our townhome and move into my parents house. This gave us an opportunity to be able to really save for the house. So we moved in on my birthday (literally) and we’ve been here ever since.
There is so much that goes into getting a house and I definitely have pointers and tips to give you all, but I will save that for another post, since this one is already long. But I have to say we’ve worked so hard on completing this goal of ours, especially my husband! I have NEVER seen someone work his ass off, in crushing this goal of his… of ours! We are truly excited and we just can’t wait to finally be in it and make it our home!
Now as we wait for the house to be done, we’ve been doing A LOT of planning. Figuring out what style we want in the house, and window shopping at all the stores for all home stuff. We’ve been looking at backsplashes for our kitchen, hardware for the cabinets, flooring, backyard designs, etc…. so I definitely need your guys input for certain things in the house! And for those that don’t follow me yet, heres my IG handle… @asimplepieceofme
Stay tuned for more home updates, and the ins and outs of buying a top…
Anonymous says
Super excited for you!!!
asimplepieceofme says
Thank you so much! We are very excited and can’t wait!