Well that week was a wild ride.
Lat week I mentioned a home in Highland we were interested in. Mostly we were interested in the neighborhood, but Highland is very expensive and the price was right on this lovely new home in the neighborhood we loved, so we were seriously considering a home purchase.
On Monday we heard that the person who had been planning on buying the house still hadn't put down any earnest money, and so if we were willing to put down the earnest money that day, then the house would be ours. After asking a few followup questions we learned that the earnest money was only a couple hundred dollars, and it would buy us 30 days with dibs on the house before any further downpayment money would be required, and if we decided to back out during those 30 days, we would almost definitely be able to get the earnest money back anyway. We knew that wasn't a guarantee, but we were willing to put down a couple hundred to buy ourselves 30 days to make the decision. So that's what we did! We wrote up a check and started dreaming up what a life in that house/neighborhood might look like.
We had to rush home after writing the check, but that evening I drove back to spend more time walking around the lot our home would actually be built on, and walking through a home of the same floorplan that had just been framed down the road. I immediately felt a little bit "off." Not about the neighborhood, but about the house and lot. The model home we had walked to was up on a hill, with a nice deck off the back and a lovely daylight basement with 10-foot-tall ceilings. Our home would be on a lot lower on the hill, with a tiny fishbowl of a backyard being fully eclipsed by the house on the hill behind it (so no privacy, and no nice views). There would be no deck because we were on the bottom of the hill, and no daylight basement or exterior entrance to the basement. I was getting weird vibes about the neighbors next door (nothing specific, just a feeling). Keep in mind, this was the last home lot with our desired floor plan available in this community. We couldn't just pick a different lot. I decided that even though there were definite drawbacks to the lot our home would be on, living in this neighborhood could be worth the drawbacks.
As I drove back home, I left a voice message for my bestie to give her an update on the situation. I could not stop crying. I just felt so uncertain about which house/neighborhood we'd be happier in long-term, and it's a big decision! I also worried that now that we had put earnest money down, Jared would be all in and unwilling to keep considering the home in Lehi. Which obviously is not how I was feeling. I was happy to have 30 more days and made a plan and task list of places to visit and information to gather with Jared to be able to make the right decision together.
The next day, Jared and I drove back to the neighborhood to walk through a different model home with different finishes, walk around our lot together, and gather a bit more information. As we walked through the model homes and the lot, I felt nothing. I could tell Jared was really excited, but I couldn't get to excited myself. I didn't necessarily want to run, but I still felt uneasy and uncertain. When we had gotten back in our car to head home, we drove past two girls around my age talking to each other on a sidewalk behind where our house would be. I asked Jared, "Should I go talk to them and ask how they like living here?" And he said, "Yes, definitely." So I left Jared and the kids in the car and went to talk to these girls for about half an hour.
I asked them what they liked and didn't like about the neighborhood, schools, home builder, etc. And honestly, even though they both insisted it's a great neighborhood, they had an awful lot of concerning tidbits of information to share, without an excitement level about the good parts to match the concerns. They mentioned LOTS of issues that everyone in the neighborhood had had with the homebuilder. Big, structural issues. They mentioned a paranoid neighbor who was always knocking on everyone's doors and yelling at kids and filing complaints with the police for weird things. Most concerning, and what closed the door completely for Jared, was the mention that the neighborhood sat right in the path of where a lot of the mountain's snowmelt would flow, and they had had issues with flooding in their own homes (which the builder wasn't helpful about fixing), and the lot that our home would be on seemed to have the worst flooding problems of them all. In fact, there was a bit of a pond on our lot already, even without having had rain recently.
When I asked the girls if they loved the schools and big park across the street, which were selling points for us, they kind of shrugged and were like, "Ya! They're great." But they didn't seem overly jazzed or have any points of excitement to share like, "There are flocks of young neighbor kids who play night games in the park all summer!" or "We just love all the teachers we've had at the schools so far." It was more like, "Ya the schools are great. They're all really far and the bus drop is far too, so you'll have to drive your kids no matter what. And they can ride their bikes but there's a crossing guard who only shows up half the time, and they'll have to ride in front of the paranoid neighbor's house and he'll probably come out and yell at your kid. And the park has great walking paths, but you know there's no playground, right?" Just, not the level of excitement I would have expected for the two things that had drawn us to this area in the first place. And when I asked about the wind they said it was just as bad in Highland as it is at Traverse Mountain. So . . . it was a bit of a buzzkill conversation, but also really enlightening. Jared was a firm NO on the flooding risk. I asked if I could have a few days to be certain and come to peace with backing out.
By Wednesday, Jared told me that our earnest money check still hadn't been cashed, and he would like to back out now before that even happened if I was willing. We spent a few hours hiking around the Lehi neighborhood next to us and both felt really good about continuing to pursue our home in the Lehi neighborhood. Two things that helped a lot with that decision were (1) The sudden presence of an enormous water retention bowl being dug about a 3-minute walk from where our home would be. It will likely have grass planted on it and be a great place for the kids to play. And just off this bowl will be access to mountain trails. So basically, our biggest draw in Highland will now exist right here in our Lehi neighborhood. And (2) Asking Jack if he'd rather move to the area with the big park across the street but have to start over at a new school, or stay here where he's started to make good friends and enjoy school. He thought about it for a while and then said he'd rather stay here. When we told him there would likely be a big grassy bowl here too, it was a no-brainer for him. So now we are full-steams-ahead on buying a home here in Lehi. With even more confidence than before, too. That made this wild week a worthwhile experience in the end. But wow. I am very ready to have a year where we don't have an enormous life change coming up or huge life decision to make. Probably in 2027. That's going to be a chill time--you'll see. (Famous last words.)
