Ups and Downs Again...

We were swimming with excitement about our new plot and we could not wait to hear back from our sales representative about the numbers.  We were ready to get started!  Then, the next day, January 3, the numbers came back and Mark said that he would like to speak to us and go over everything to get started.  So, with our daughter in school we packed up our son and headed to the Milan model to meet Mark.  We could barely hold in our excitement.  We were going to be official home buyers again by the end of the day.  How could we not be excited?!  

We arrived to find Mark with all of the papers and the list of starting prices for the Misthaven.  Uh oh.  Even getting bare minimum upgrades and taking full advantage of their freebies, the home was price just too much for us to handle and be comfortable.  Farewell, Misthaven.  Mark tried to assure us that he believed we could afford it, but we knew it was probably nothing more than a sales pitch.  It was time to start over again from scratch.  Goodbye, home building.  Hello, again 60's fixer upper.  Cue Simon and Garfunkel...hello, darkness, my old friend.....

Our dreams diminished we thought it was over.  We had received our hold money back for the lot that would have housed our Misthaven and returned home to sulk in our disappointment.  What a letdown!  We discussed back and forth about lowering our expectations and moving back to scanning Trulia for a home.  We would have to cross our fingers and hope that something would come on the market that was remotely close to what we were wanting.  

Like a good salesman, Mark was relentless.  He was not discouraged by our backing away from the Misthaven and said that he had another model that we could build on this lot.  It was the Ferncliff model.  This home was dramatically smaller than the Misthaven and, from the images online, looked like the guest house for the Milan.  Mark was kind enough to send us all of the specs and the price list.  Sure, it was much cheaper, but our family of four would be on top of one another.  

We had a serious conversation about the home.  Were we willing to settle for a Ferncliff just because we so desperately wanted to build?  It just seemed so small and the thought of upgrading in the future just seemed like a pain.  

Then, we discussed the lot.  As the emotional high was fading we were better able to assess the real potential of the property.  The front would face a couple of older, more run down homes in an adjacent neighborhood.  Not much appeal there, but who is spending a ton of time looking out their front windows?  The backyard, unfortunately, did not offer much more appeal.  The yard looked huge on paper, but upon closer inspection in person we saw that about 10 feet from the house was an enormous upward slope toward huge power lines.  This looked like a potential disaster of flooding and who really wants to look out a morning room window to this?

So, we called Mark and said "Thanks for all your hard work, but we will pass".  We thought this would be the last time that we spoke to him and our dream of a new home was officially over for now.  Little did we know that the interwebs would come through for us again!