Episode 120: Searching for the Perfect Home? Don’t Give Up!

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Lindsey Litton:

Welcome to the MilHousing Nation podcast where we bring you stories from real military spouses who have been in your shoes. From New spouses to veteran spouses. You’ll get tips, tricks and actionable steps that can help you along your military life journey. This episode is brought to you by armed forces insurance. Armed Forces insurance offers personal insurance options specifically designed for military families. To learn more, visit them online@asi.org or give him a call at 1-800-313-1936. Now, here’s Ashley Peebles.

Ashley:

Hello, everyone. My name is Ashley Peebles. Welcome to the MilHousing Nation podcast. So as most of you know, and our faithful listeners know, we talk a whole lot about moving on this podcast, we talk a whole lot about military moves, we talk a whole lot about what to do, what not to do, how to do it the very best way possible, because MilHousing Network is a network of pre-screened realtors, all over the country that are ready and waiting for your phone call, like they are ready to help you with your PCs. They’re ready to help you with your move to make it as seamless as possible. But I could not resist the opportunity to film this podcast right in the middle of my own crazy pants move. So if you’re watching this via YouTube, go ahead and turn it off and just listen to it via audio. Because I’m a train wreck. Like the first thing that you thought be honest, when you press play on the video was tragic. She looks horrible, right? So if you’re listening via audio, just pretty much picture the worst thing that you can imagine, like I haven’t slept very well, in a long time. I have no idea where my makeup is. Didn’t find the shampoo till this morning, change deodorant and it completely, like broke out my underarms. I’ve got some crazy rash, may have broken my finger earlier today. That is not a joke. Everything about this move is just humorous. So I couldn’t resist sharing a podcast just in my own crazy mood. So we’ve moved a lot of times we’ve been a part of the military part of the Air Force for 16 years. I am a military brat. Actually, my dad was in the army. My grandfather was in the army. So moving is just in my blood. And every two years, I get the itch. If we’re somewhere three years, I’ve been ready to go for a year, right? So two years ago, we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia. And that was our choice. It is where we want to live. It’s the place that we want to stay forever. So we moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, and we built the perfect house, we got to pick out all of the finishings, we got to pick out the floor plan. It is absolutely to a tee everything that I chose. It’s an awesome house, in an awesome neighborhood with the very best neighbors possible. But it was missing. Just a couple of things like on the dream. Let me live here forever list. It was the perfect house. For the time it was the perfect house for the season of life that we’re in. But I grew up with a pole at the house. And I always knew that my forever home would be it would have water, it would be a pool, or it would be on the water one day. But let’s face it cost a whole lot of money to live on the water, right? it actually costs a whole lot of money to put in a pool if you’re talking about Virginia. So if you were one of the lucky people that live in Florida, your pools cost one third the price of those pools of the people who are living in Virginia. So what happened? myself, my husband, just like the rest of the nation, we saw the interest rates drop and just plummet. And we just like a whole lot of you are eligible for the VA loans. We saw that the VA loans, we’re now loading up to 100%, the cap that we used to have to deal with for the certain areas. So if you are just now dealing with the VA loans, and you haven’t done it before, when we used our VA loan before they had a cap for a certain area, well, those are gone. They’re now loaning up to 100%. So we saw the great rates. We saw the incredible real estate market. And we decided, hey, we’ve got this brand new house that we built two years ago that we’ve worked on because what some of you probably don’t know is I love to build things I love to make things better. We so we like to pretend that we’re chip and Joanna. So what we’ve done is we’ve taken the brand new house from 2018 and we have slowly but surely just added to it and made it better. We put a wood ceiling in the vaulted sunroom. We added shiplap. All over the place, we added a fabric wall, we put built-ins in, we did a whole new custom closet. So we really super pimped out this house. Right? Then we knew that we had a lot of equity in it. So we thought, you know what we’ve been in it two years, it’s going to sell fast. It is like it looks like a show home. Why don’t we take advantage of this real estate market, sell our house, take the equity that we have in it, flop it down on a house with a pool, instead of just putting one in next door, because the one negative to our house before is we only have side yard. Our backyard was gorgeous. But you couldn’t build there it was protected land. So the only place we could put a pool was in our side yard. So we thought let’s take all of the equity, let’s take advantage of the interest rates like so many of you guys are doing and let’s find a house with a pool, it’s going to be incredible. Here’s where I want to start sharing that it is a process finding the perfect house. And I need you to know that you just have to keep the faith because I found what I would consider just the most incredible home on the planet. It already had this gorgeous pool in the backyard and had a triple terrace. It was amazing. It was way too big. It was like 6000 square feet. Nobody made 6000 square feet, especially myself, and my whole little short family. But it was incredible. And it needed a lot of work on the inside, which is really what drew us to it because we love doing the work. It has been on the market forget this 1200 days. So we put our offering and we thought this is awesome like this is it’s been on the market for a long time, they will be able to get a great deal. Well, they came right back and they said Alright, we’re not willing to meet you at your price. But here’s the price. So we went back and said, Okay, we’ll meet you at your price. But how about we split closing costs. And then we didn’t hear anything for one day, two days, three days, we had no idea what was going on, because they came back so quickly, that first time. So we got in touch with them. And by the way, I should have told you that there were no other offers on the table. So that’s the reason that we went back and said, Now when you split closing costs, we’ll meet you at your price. Well, we find out the next Monday that three other offers had come in over the weekend, and they had accepted one and we didn’t even know about it. I was gutted. I was just so upset and just heartbroken because I really felt like that was the house that I was looking for. And I felt like we lost it on a stupid technicality. I felt like it was our fault. Like we should not have gone back and said we split closing costs. My husband felt like he slow rolled it because he was trying to save a few dollars. Our amazing real estate agent felt like she gave us a bad gouge like she gave us bad information. The truth is we made the best decision with the information that we had at hand. And I am a person of faith. And immediately I said, Well, I mean, God just has something better in store for us. Or he wants us to stay right here, right? So and I kept telling everybody that there’s something better or he wants us to stay here. Let’s just feel it out. So we waited around another week. And I kept looking on all the sites and talking to our real estate agent. And I found another perfect tabs like it was amazing. It was again 6000 square feet. I don’t know what the heck I was doing. Maybe I had my like meter set wrong on Zillow or something, I’m not sure. But I found another amazing house. in your town. It was gorgeous. already had the pool of your dreams. It was stellar. And it had just gone on the market that day. I found it at 1130 that night. And at 8am. The next morning, our real estate agent called and it was already under contract in less than 24 hours. And I was like What is going on? Why in the world all these perfect houses keep falling out from underneath us in the weirdest way. Because we would find a great house and not even get to go see it or not put an offer in or anything like that they would already be gone. So if you are looking for your perfect house now in this crazy market with these amazing interest rates, keep the faith if they keep falling through keep the faith because we went to see that house that was perfect. We even put in a backup offer because we were like, well, if it doesn’t go through those other people put an offer in sight unseen because it was so amazing. So what if it doesn’t go through? Maybe it’ll be ours. But I decided that the good Lord was just telling me to stay put and be content where I was. So I deleted all the apps off our phone. I told our real estate agent that we were just probably going to stay right where we were. Because that’s what God wanted from us. So fast forward to 1130 that very same night, she sent me one last listing and she said hey, I just saw this, and I thought it’s exactly what you’re looking for. And guys, it was exactly what we were looking for. Because remember how I said that I knew that my perfect home was on the water. And obviously, that metaphor because you can afford to live on the water, right? Especially in Williamsburg, Virginia. Well, apparently we can. There was a home on the James River for sale in our price range, and it is stellar. We wrote over on jet skis, we parked at the dock at the 155 foot dock with its own boathouse in boatlift, locked up from the water to see this house. And I completely fell in love. It took all of three seconds before my husband knew that we just had to find a way to get this house. But because we had lost the previous two in such incredibly weird ways, I was just a faithful, nervous wreck. Like I knew that the good Lord is always taking care of us. I knew that the perfect house out there was but you know, it was out there for us, or we were supposed to stay put. But I fell so hard for this house, that I was so nervous, something was gonna happen. But it didn’t. Everything went through perfectly. We sold our home last Friday at 8am. And we closed on this home last Friday at 1pm. So here’s where the crazy move story comes in. And where I wanted to give you a couple of tips on top of just keeping the faith.

One, make sure if you are selling a home and buying a home in the same day, you have a plan to either rent back the home that you’re selling, or you already have a pre-occupancy on the books. Here’s why there was no one living in the house that we were purchasing. So we were assured that they’re going to let us put some things in the garage early. And we needed to put some things in there because we were selling a home and buying one in the same day. So what we wanted to do was actually rent the house that we were buying early and move our stuff in here. That way we could load up a u haul, come across the river, drop it off, go back load up, come across the river drop it off. Well, they weren’t comfortable with letting us rent it beforehand. And we found that out too late, because our new buyers had already scheduled their move into our house. So what does that mean? That means that people that have moved a bajillion times, made a rookie mistake, sold a home and bought a home in the same day. And that meant that all of our things had to fit into u hauls packed by Ma and was husband into those u hauls in enough time for us to clean the old house to be able to do the walkthrough with our new buyers and sell it to them. So I thought you know what, let’s get to 26 foot u haul. That’ll be fine, right? No, that’s not fine. It took three u hauls. And even with three u hauls, we were still putting things in our neighbor’s garage. I’m very blessed that my best friend lives across the street from me and that she let us use her garage. But the other thing was because we were having so much trouble with fitting everything in the U haul. It took triple, quadruple whatever’s after that the time to fit it in the U haul. Because we had to make sure that it was just perfect. And we got everything in there. We ended up with three u hauls my best friend’s garage full and staying up the entire night, cleaning the house so that we could do the walkthrough the next morning with our new buyers. I’m telling you guys, it was a moving nightmare. It was so absolutely exhausting, that I couldn’t wait to just come on here and tell you the story of our crazy move to tell you that if you’re looking for a house right now, it is the perfect time. The interest rates are incredible. The VA loans are incredible there. It’s such an incredible, an invaluable resource for our military community. It is such a blessing that we’re able to use the VA loans. And even when we were at her closing our closing lender to or I’m sorry, our closing title company just kept saying and here is this incredible interest rate here is this incredible interest rate again, take advantage of it if you’re looking to maybe upgrade, but keep the same payment these interest rates is the time to do it. Or maybe you’re looking to downsize. Oh my goodness, put these interest rates and the equity that you have in your own home. And bam, you’ve got a much lower interest rate. Or maybe you’re looking to invest, maybe you’re looking to find a rental property. The truth is, with everything going on in our nation and all of the people who are losing their jobs, you know that the foreclosure market is going to be hopping over the next year. Because the first thing that’s going to go on the market or everyone’s second homes, the vacation homes, so maybe start sacking away some money and stocking it away so that you can get that vacation home and rent it out and have another stream of income. Just keep the faith and know that if you feel like you found the quote-unquote perfect home, if it doesn’t work out, it wasn’t meant to be. If it doesn’t work out. It’s not the perfect home. Because there’s someone you know what, no matter what your personal faith and you just think things happen because they happen and it is what it is. It’s going to work out, everything’s going to be absolutely phenomenal. I am a hopeless optimist, and I’m filled with faith. But even the house buying process tested mine, right? My husband is a pessimist from way back. And it tested him to the nth degree. We knew that we were moving into our dream home on the James River, in the middle of the middle of the night extravaganza of cleaning and packing. He had no idea why we were leaving a perfectly good brand new two year home that we built ourselves. And he kept saying, I don’t know why we’re moving. This is crazy. We are crazy. Why don’t we do this to ourselves. But if you keep the same, and you wake up with the sunrise on the James River, you’ll have something akin to what my husband said this morning, and it was Honey, I did not see your vision. I had no idea why we were doing this, he said, but thank you very much. He said, thanks for having enough faith for all of us. Thanks for having that futuristic brain of yours. Thanks for seeing this, and helping this to become a reality because the truth is, most couples have a dreamer. And then they’ve got to do or they’ve got a dreamer. And then they’ve got someone that keeps them anchored. The way that Daniel and I look at it is I’m like a balloon, it’ll just float off if I’m not anchored. And he is the anchor that makes certain that I stay close enough to the ground that I don’t just float off into Wonderland or never Neverland, and then never returned back down. But if he didn’t have me, he never even lifted off the ground just a little bit. So keep the faith if you’re looking for the house. And even if you’ve moved 27 times with the military know that it’s going to be stressful. And you’re going to do stupid things like not have a home for several hours, but you’re going to be homeless for several hours if you don’t do the right thing. Maybe you host a podcast, and maybe a few months ago, actually, just a couple months ago, maybe you did a podcast, and it was on how to pack out. And it was on how to unpack. Maybe your husband never listened to your podcast? And maybe he did all of the things that you said do not do. You know, like the number one do not do is Hey, don’t pack up your kitchen first. What is the number one do thing Hey, unpack your kitchen first, you know, what is my sweet husband do tea packs or kitchen uppers where we couldn’t find anything for like a week and a half. And I came home from the grocery store. And I was like, Where is everything in the kitchen? He was like, Oh, I packed it up. I just thought it’d be the easiest for him to pack up. And I literally said, Honey, you don’t listen to my podcast at all, do you? And he was like, Well, of course I do. I was like, This is the number one rule, you pack the kitchen up last and you unpack it first. And he was like, okay, maybe I missed that one.

So no matter how many times you have moved, you’re gonna make stupid boneheaded mistakes, you’re gonna pack your kitchen up, first, you’re gonna lose the toilet paper like we did, you’re going to have friends over to help you pack and they’re going to pack up your cleaning supplies, and they’re going to put it on a u haul that happened, then you’re going to get to your new house, you’re not able to find shampoo, you’re going to need to wear a hat when you feel your podcasts, so many incredible things. But make sure that you write them down in journal them because I can tell you that one day, your memories not gonna be as good as it is right now. And you’re going to want to look back and laugh on this because I truly believe that moving is a lot like having a baby. It is miserable in the middle of the process. But once you hold that baby in your arms, it’s better than you ever imagined. And immediately you think, Oh, another one of these, or maybe not immediately. But when they’re two or when they’re three, or when they’re four, and you miss having that baby you think, Oh, I think I want another one. That’s a whole lot like moving, you move and you’re like, I’m never moving again. This is the most horrible thing that I’ve ever done in my life. But then two years later, you start getting that itch and you’re like, I think I want to move. Maybe, maybe you’re bruised from head to toe. Maybe you’re bloody, maybe you’re battered. Maybe you may have a broken finger like I do. But a couple years, I’m probably going to get the image and so are you. So please, if you are looking at homes right now, keep the faith the perfect one out there is the perfect one is out there for you. If you can try to abide by the do’s and do not have pack outs and an unpacking. But at the end of the day, just know that eventually all the boxes will get unpacked except for that one that never gets unpacked, it’s always in your attic, always in the garage for moved to move to move that you laugh at and you just shove it to the back every time. But it’s all gonna work out. Eventually you’re going to be able to find your shampoo. Eventually you’re gonna find a colander. Eventually all the things are going to resurface is going to be better than you ever imagined. I hope you guys enjoyed this podcast. I hope that you were enjoying all your moves and your PCS’s. If you need anything from the MilHousing Network, we are here to help. This is literally what we do all day every day. So reach out to the MilHousing Network. Make sure that you get linked up with a pre screened realtor that is going to make certain that you do the right things and you don’t get stuck without a home from eight to one for selling. And when you’re buying, make sure that you subscribe to this podcast and we will see you next week. Thank you for listening to the MilHousing nation podcast. To connect with MilHousing Network, visit us online at MilHousingnetwork.com.