Hello my friends! It has been awhile. Needless to say I have been busy! We have had a lot of life changing things happen in our family. Starting with selling our home that we lived in for 8 years! Summer of 2022, as I was driving away from my Mom’s house, I had this grand idea to sell our house. We’ve been wanting to move for years but it just never seemed like the right time. I mean is it ever?! So this brings us to, we bought land and now what?! But with a whole lot of craziness mixed in!
Y’all remember the crazy housing market in 2022?! Even if you weren’t selling or buying you remember. Houses were going for $60K over asking, selling within 2 days and so on! I remember dropping my kids off at my Mom’s house and pulling out of the drive and having this overwhelming feeling that we should sell our house! Call it crazy, call it God’s voice, whatever it was my brain just went wild with ALL the ideas! By the time I made it home I was dead set, 100% all in, no looking back! However, there was that “little” detail of pitching the idea to my husband!!
After a few short or perhaps long hours later we were officially “Selling Our House Team Howell” I can be very persuasive! 😉
We immediately called our long time friend and realtor Darrian Clark. He is someone we have know for 10 + years, he’s always had our back and we trusted him fully with this endeavor. He warned us that this would not be easy – approaching back to school, showings, offers, the crazy buying balloon could pop at any time! But we were willing to take the risk because this is how we could make our long time dream of buying land a reality. So we said LET’S GO!!!!
Our house officially went on the market July 27th, 2022. I had not been this excited about something in a VERY long time. We immediately had two open houses. And many many showings. Nothing brings on severe anxiety like trying to keep a spotless house with two young kids for months, oh and then being kicked out of your house for hours! One Saturday we spent a solid eight hours at my Mom’s. Luckily she is incredibly gracious and fed us, loved us and didn’t kick us out once!! 😉
This process was anything but rainbows and sunshine. We did not get immediate offers like we had hoped. Our house did not sell within hours, days or even weeks. In fact, it took a solid two months of fear, anxiety, cleaning, more cleaning and did I mention cleaning!? When ended up dropping the sales price in hopes of bringing in new buyers. And then it happened!! THE OFFER!!! It only takes one good one. We ACCEPTED!! Insert giant weight being lowered, not gone, but lowered off our shoulders. Now comes the next round of anxiety and fear!! LOL!! Hey but at least I didn’t have to keep my house spotless anymore!
If you have ever bought or sold a house, this is when the inspection and repair requests come in. I am going to stay tactful and not disclose what the buyers requested. Let’s just say it was insane, INSANE and VERY expensive and completely not what an inspection is all about. I mean we were ready to fix the roof, or doors, trim, etc. but not willing to budge on these requests. We were completely baffled and heart broken because we knew we would have to walk away from the offer. After months of all the things the idea of starting over was devastating. After many, many talks with each other and our realtor we decided to decline all the buyers requests. I know you are probably thinking not cool, who does that?! But trust me when I say you would have too! After the news had been sent to their realtor we just waited. Waited to see what happens next. I will say we felt at peace with losing the offer. If this wasn’t the time to sell, we were comfortable with taking our house off the market and trying again in the spring.
I honestly don’t remember how long it took to hear back from them. My husband and I just kind of checked out for a second. Bracing ourselves with the realization it might not happen. But what do you know, low and behold we got a call from Darrian our realtor, and he said the buyers are still in and they want the house and will move forward with no repairs!! Wait?! WHAT???!!! THANK YOU JESUS!!! Insert happy dancing and prolly some ugly crying!! We did it!!
Now comes the sweat!! Kidding, so gross but I mean y’all!! If you live in North Texas, aside from the crazy housing market we also had crazy weather that summer. Well that’s pretty normal in Texas but dang! We were in a drought and extreme heat when this was all going down. My poor family!! They got suckered into helping us with numerous garage sales. BTW they are AMAZING!!! And I am so blessed to have the support system. 🙂
Anyway back to the sweat!! I pretty much packed a 3,000 sq. ft house solo! The kids at school, hubby at work. What else is a girl to do!? So many boxes, so much tape, so much delirium! The good thing is we sold majority of the large furniture, purged a TON of decorative items (I might be borderline hoarder in this department) so it made packing a little easier.
Fast forward a few weeks later and we closed on September 23rd, 2022! Literally minutes before the housing market mellowed out. Nothing in life is easy and this definitely was not but SO SO worth it! I am thankful I am married to man that listens to my crazy and isn’t afraid to take a risk or leap of faith.
Now to the good part!! WE BOUGHT LAND!!!! WOOOO HOOOOO!!! I have been married for 17 years and this is a dream we have had since year one! I can’t tell you why it took us this long. But it was worth the wait. We purchased 8.6 acres in Bells, Texas. It is a beautiful, small town just outside of Sherman. They have an outstanding school district. Soon to have Panther pride!!
We are not living out there just yet. We are still in Allen for a short time more. But soon enough!! So many more things coming which I will share in an additional post. But let’s just say they involve a home build, bees, honey and maybe a chicken or two! So stick around, it’s about to get good! To follow our journey of we bought land now what follow us here!
I encourage you to take the risk! Follow your dreams. It’s never too soon or too late. If it scares you then you are on the right path. We have no idea what we are doing or what lies ahead but we are SOOO excited and hopeful!!
Hope you stick around and share this journey with us!
If you are needing some inspo for your Easter gathering! Check out one of my favs here!
XOXO,
Ivy
