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The Emotional Roller Coaster Of Building A New Home And Selling Your Old House At The Same Time

By Peter Anderson 6 Comments - The content of this website often contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you buy through those links (at no cost to you!). Learn more about how we make money. Last edited December 6, 2012.

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Over the past year or so we’ve been exploring the possibility of selling our current home and buying or building a new home somewhere close by.  The process of finding a new place to call home is definitely much more difficult than I would have imagined it would be.  It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride.

There are a lot of reasons why we’ve considered moving on from our current home where we’ve lived for about 6 years.  We want to have a bit more space, have a main floor office so that I can work from home on occasion, a 3 car garage and we also wanted to have more of a yard than we have in our current house.

Our current house is in a neighborhood where the houses are built on smaller lots, and the small lots don’t leave a whole lot of room for a yard. If we want to go out and play outside with our son we almost have to head to a local park or playground because our outdoor space is minimal, and it sits right on top of our alley which has cars going up and down it all day.

This year we started looking a bit more seriously for a new house since our son is getting bigger and we’ll likely be heading outdoors with him more often. So here’s our roller coaster ride, so far.

Building And Selling A Home At The Same Time

Quick Navigation

  • Finding A New Home
  • Buying A Lot And Building A New Home
  • Problems When Building Are To Be Expected
  • The Pressure Of Selling Your Old House
  • Options If The House Doesn’t Sell
  • Getting Emotionally Invested In A House

Finding A New Home

Finding a new home is usually the easy part, but in our case it hasn’t been as easy as we had hoped.

My wife has specific wants in our new home (since we don’t plan on moving again for a LONG time) and a lot of the existing homes that we were looking at didn’t have all of the things we wanted all in one package.  We looked at a lot of homes, but nothing really seemed to click or felt like home.  The homes either felt too old, too run down, or the layout just didn’t seem to work for us. Having a nice neighborhood was also key, and a lot of them fell short in that area.

Buying A Lot And Building A New Home

My wife’s parents are home builders, and if we do end up building a new home we figure we’ll most likely use them as our builder.  They have a wealth of experience in building custom homes for wealthy clients, and since they’re building for family we know they’d go above and beyond what they even usually do. They also offered to help us out, and build us the home at a reduced cost. In the end going with them is a no brainer.

My wife and I have been looking at lots around our area for quite a while, but none of them really seemed like a good fit.  Usually the lot didn’t feel right because there was something wrong with it. One lot was beautiful, but had a major road running behind it. Another was nice, but was right underneath the power lines – you could hear them humming overhead. Finally we found a lot that seemed like the perfect one. It was in a wooded Cul-de-sac, and gave a good sense of privacy while having a huge backyard and pretty views.  It also has more than enough room to build the home we dreamed of, and was close (but not too close) to major highways.

My in-laws ended up buying 3 different lots to build on in the neighborhood, and one of them is going to be for us and our new home… if we are able to sell our current house.  After they bought the lots, however, there was a problem.

Problems When Building Are To Be Expected

Building And Selling A Home At The Same TimeSo now that they had bought the lots, my father-in-law was preparing the lots to build on them.  He needed to cut down some of the trees, and bring in tons of back-fill to bring them up to grade.  Because the lots were bank owned, and because they needed some work, they were able to buy them at quite a discount.  Normally lots in the area go for well over $100,000, but these lots they were able to get for less than $80,000.

Now that my father-in-law was preparing to fill in the lots with dirt, he was doing some research on where the utilities and sewer were located. The bank had stated that the lot was fully furnished with these things.  It turns out they were wrong. Apparently the one existing house in the neighborhood had connections, but in order to build any more houses on the lots some major work would need to be done to move the utilities. Doing that would mean ripping out part of the street and would cost in excess of $20,000. That could cut out a big chunk of our savings on the lot, if not all of it.

Since the bank stated in the contract that the utilities were set to go, we felt they were on the hook for the costs to move them.  They didn’t like that and were balking at paying.  My father-in-law was able to work with his contacts, however, and get bids to have the utilities moved – and back-fill moved into the lots for just a few thousand dollars instead of $20,000+.  When they heard he had been able to  get the cost reduced by so much, the bank agreed to pay for them. Crisis averted.

The Pressure Of Selling Your Old House

So now we’re in a situation where we have the perfect lot, and we have a great builder, but we still have an existing house.  We’re now need to sell our house before we move forward.  We wouldn’t be able to build the home until next spring anyway, so what we’ve decided to do with my in-laws is to wait until early spring to list our house on the market. At that time we’ll list the house for sale, and my in-laws will start building the house on spec.

If our home doesn’t sell within a 2-3 month time frame that they’re building the house, they’ll list the new house for sale, and most likely sell it.

All of this to say that we’re going to need to do some serious work in preparing our home for sale, and listing it at a price that is fair on the market, yet gets us what we need to have in order to pay off our mortgage, and hopefully have a little left over.

Unfortunately we bought our current home at the height of the market back in 2006 for around $270,000, and in the meantime our home value has dropped anywhere from $40,000-60,000, depending on who you ask.  Zillow estimates shows our home value somewhere in the $230,000+ range.  Other places show closer to $200-215,000.  It’s quite a range.

Unfortunately our neighborhood has also had several foreclosures recently as well, and because of that home values have been hurt, a lot of people are underwater in their homes.  We have seen homes similar to ours selling for just anywhere from $170,000-$210,000.

We currently owe just over $193,000 on the home.  At this point if we could sell the house for enough to cover the mortgage and the costs of selling a home, I think we’d be happy. We have a decent amount of money saved up for a down payment, and if we can cover all the costs of our previous home we should be fine.

Options If The House Doesn’t Sell

So what are we going to do if we can’t sell our current home for what we need? We have a couple main options.

  • Rent out our house and still move: We’ve had neighbors who have rented out their home in our neighborhood (due to being underwater).  They’ve now been successfully renting out the house and been cash flow positive on it for a couple of years. We have considered doing this, but depending on association rules and other factors, this may or may not be a possibility. I do like the idea of having a cash flow positive rental property though.
  • Stay where we are: If we aren’t able to sell within the time frame allotted, we may just end up staying where we are for now. Whether that means staying there for another year, or another 5 years, who knows.

Getting Emotionally Invested In A House

One of the biggest things we’ll be dealing with I think is becoming too emotionally invested in the idea of a new house, and everything that relates to it. For months now we’ve considered moving to this new lot, talked about what we would do when building the new house and just pictured ourselves living there.  If it doesn’t happen, I think there will be sense of loss for what might have been if we had moved there.

Personally I think I’m better able to divorce the emotional and rational perspective when it comes to a house. But for my wife it’s a home, it’s security and it’s a sense of family and place.  If it doesn’t happen it will likely hit her harder.

When it comes down to it, I do hope that everything falls into place like we need it to, and we end up getting the home of our dreams. We’ll pray about it, we’ll work towards making it happen, and seek God’s will for our path.  The next few months should be an interesting ride.  Time to buckle up and hold on!

Are you in the middle of considering building or buying a new home? What things are you doing to prepare yourself?

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Last Edited: 6th December 2012 The content of biblemoneymatters.com is for general information purposes only and does not constitute professional advice. Visitors to biblemoneymatters.com should not act upon the content or information without first seeking appropriate professional advice. In accordance with the latest FTC guidelines, we declare that we have a financial relationship with every company mentioned on this site.

This article is about: Mortgage, Real Estate

About Peter Anderson

Peter Anderson is a Christian, husband to his beautiful wife Maria, and father to his 2 children. He loves reading and writing about personal finance, and also enjoys a good board game every now and again. You can find out more about him on the about page. Don't forget to say hi on Pinterest, Twitter or Facebook!

Comments

    Share Your Thoughts: Cancel reply

  1. Mandy @ MoneyMasterMom says

    We bought a waterfront property as an investment,but after spending some time there doing renovations we fell in love with the property. Now we’re looking to renovate to live there full time. I’m nervous about how much it will cost to make the property big enough for a family of 5, and now that we both have blogs we have to consider rural internet speeds.

    Reply
  2. Keith and Kinsey's Real Estate Update says

    Good luck with your home build. I hope it all works out for you. We just finished building a house in July. Similarly to you, our previous home (a condo) had gone done in value since we bought it. We got it sold, and lost a little money on that sale, but it was well worth it. We blogged throughout our home building process (at the linked website) if you are interested.

    Reply
  3. DC @ Young Adult Money says

    I would love to build in the future. When I was in third grade my family moved into a brand-new home, and there’s just something about being the first people to live in a home that makes it feel like YOUR home. I hope that the process goes smoothly for you, and I’m looking forward to future posts about it!

    Reply
  4. Bernadette says

    We’re going through the same process. We’ve found a model home we love, but once we priced it out, they’ve just overpriced it. So we found another model that includes way more in the base package that will work not quite as perfectly but is a great alternative that we’ll probably go with. We’ll still be able to build a new house and make it our own even though it may not be the one I initially fell in love with, but we had to consider that the amount of money we’ll put into it will be far less than getting the “perfect” home that doesn’t include any of the upgrades. And the whole reason we’re moving is location and the second location may be even better than the first. So hard to weigh out every factor and figure out which ones are more important than others!

    Reply
  5. Brad Draeger says

    I caught this title and had to read it. My wife and I were in a similar situation in September. We wanted a 4th bedroom, upstairs office, 3 car garage and bigger yard. We found a lot and a home and started the process. We were all set but felt the aspect of risk and contentment set in. We could afford the home by worldly standards but did we really need it. Our current home is worth $275k and we owe $165k We built it 10 years ago and we liked it. Our initial goal was to pay it off in the next 5 years before our oldest enters high school at the local Lutheran high school. Then we would be able to bank roll education costs with no other commitments. With this new house our plans would change and we would have $250k in debt and 5-8 more years of house commitment. After we signed the papers for the house we had a bad feeling. 2 days later we backed out of the house deal and haven’t looked back. God showed us that we needed to be content with what we had. It was a hard process for me to overcome emotionally. It was the perfect house and a chance to start over again in a new house with everything we wanted. It is great to be led through life. Good luck in your process. If it is meant to be, it will work out.

    Reply
  6. Lena @ WhatMommyDoes says

    We aren’t there yet, but we likely will be in the next 5-10 years. My current plan is to pay off our current home so we won’t have the added pressure of needing to sell right in the middle of everything.

    Reply
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