LIFE WITH THE WARDRIPS: THE JOURNEY CONTINUES: Our New Big House!

About two or so years ago, Keira's two closest girlfriends moved from condos to houses. After each move, the phrase "new big house" was born as Keira went to visit her friends (eg "Are we going to play at Ella's new big house today?"). Well, now it is our turn as we are closing a chapter in this house and preparing to move into our new big house!

Here's how it all came about...

After Corinne was born, it became pretty evident that we had outgrown our small home. We talked about lots of ways to make this house work, like putting Corinne in Keira's room or putting Corinne in the guest room/office and moving the office stuff into our master bedroom. As we continued to discuss our ideas and as Corinne continued to grow, we realized this space was getting smaller and smaller. One thing we wanted was to keep the guest room so that our families would have a place to stay when they visit. So, with that in mind, we didn't see how we'd be able to make things work in this house.

Finally, once fall hit, we decided to take the plunge and asked our Realtor, Lisa, to open up an MLS web portal for us so we could see what the real estate market looked like. Of course, right away there were properties that looked interesting and we began looking at lots of different houses. We found one house we liked and put it an offer, but we were outbid by someone else with a higher offer. That was a little disappointing, but it helped us realize the market was tough: the amount of good properties available was slim and there were many buyers, multiple offers on good properties, and some offers going even higher than the asking price.

After losing the first bid, we found another good property nearby and were more deliberate in pursuing this property. We submitted a letter and picture introducing ourselves and explaining why we thought the house would be a good fit for us. The seller, a fellow Qualcomm employee, liked us and said they would choose us (out of 10 offers) if we could match the highest offer. After crunching the numbers, we decided to go up on our offer and we were chosen. Initially, we were excited and proceeded with the inspection, but during & after the inspection, we began to feel more and more uncomfortable with some things that were revealed. It was an older house and needed several big repairs (roof tiles, backyard fence, electrical, etc). There were many things we liked about the house (5 bedrooms, large backyard, etc), but after agonizing over it for a few days, we decided to back out of escrow and let the house go.

This was a tough decision and very disappointing, but overall, we felt that it was the right decision. So, it was back to square one and looking through the MLS listings that came out periodically. Then, one day, our realtor, Lisa, was in the Sorrento Valley area and stopped in at the Pardee sales office and got some information about the new homes they were building. Back when we first started looking for a house, we inquired with Lisa about the possibility of getting into a brand new home, but after a quick glance at the numbers, we concluded they were out of our price range.

Well, upon further inspection of the house prices, our finances, and some of the incentives offered by Pardee, it turned out that we actually COULD afford one of the new homes! I was a little skeptical at first and when Noah asked if I wanted to go look at the models, I said no. I knew I would like them and felt like it would be too disappointing if we weren't able to get one. We found out we were "late to the party" as Noah put it because many of the houses had already been sold and there were only a few more phases left to be released. We did end up looking at the models and selected the one we liked best (out of three) and put our name on a list to try to claim one. We were #75 on the list and there were 7 lots opening up for sale! Our odds did not look good.

Well, as were were waiting for the release of the 7 lots, an email was sent out to the 75 people on the waiting list that said someone had given up their lot in the previous release and whoever came down to the Pardee office first with a check for $15,000 would have first dibs on the house. Noah immediately grabbed the checkbook and flew out of the house to submit a check! The house up for grabs was a different model than the one we initially liked, but it didn't matter--we just wanted to get our foot in the door because we thought we didn't have any chance on the list of 75!

Soooo, Noah was first with a check and we got to claim Lot 60 of Phase 12. We were a little overwhelmed with the craziness of how everything came together so quickly, but we kept moving forward. We visited the models many more times and scrutinized every detail of the floor plan and tried to envision how we would use the space for our family. We had about a week or so before we had to sign papers and move forward or back out and get our deposit back, so we thought long and hard about it. We decided we DID really like the floor plan of the house, so that was good, but there were other trade-offs we had to consider...the backyard was going to be very small, which was a hard reality to swallow after coming from the other house we pulled out of that had a big backyard. Also, this new house would be about 5 min from Noah's work (the biggest pro for us!), but it would also mean being further away from church, friends, shopping, etc.

Again, we had many, many conversations and did lots of soul searching and prayed a lot before moving forward with this huge commitment. Ultimately, we decided, YES, this is the house we want for our family and we signed on the dotted line to move forward with making it our home!!

After we said yes, we were on the fast track of deciding on options and customizing the details. This was all new territory for us, so it was very overwhelming, but somewhat fun and exciting to be able to choose things we wanted to go into the house. We got to decide on big things like flooring, all the way down to small details like the type of counter edge-cut we wanted in the kitchen and bathrooms. So crazy!!

The planning appointments started in October and over the last several months, we have watched our plot of dirt turn into a beautiful home. It is now February and we've visited the house a lot the last few weeks and we are so excited with how the final details of the house are coming together! We have our final walk-thru in about a week and a half and will get the keys on March 5--soooo exciting!!!!!!

Here are some pics of the progression:

Pre-Sorrento Heights