I have good news this week about our homestead search! I actually debated on waiting to tell you all about it until the deal is set in stone because it feels too good to be true.
Let me tell you a story that will help explain how I am feeling. When I first met Cameron, I could not write about him in my journal. I was pretty good about writing about every other guy I dated in high school and college but I couldn’t write about Cameron because it felt too good to be true, like I would jinx our relationship or something by writing about it!
I know that sounds super silly and I’ve regretted it looking back! I wish I had those details. I’m feeling the same way today. For some reason this is hard for me to write down about our homestead news but I am going to do it.
Everything started last Friday. After writing my last Weekly Digs (#52) about how the other house didn’t work out I was feeling frustrated but motivated to find something. Cameron and I had been checking real estate listings at least once a day to see if anything new was popping up.
So Friday morning, I’m looking at real estate listings and I decided to sort by “recently changed”. A piece of land popped up first because it dropped in price. I had seen it before but it was never pinned on the right place on the map so I didn’t know where it was located.
Once the listing dropped in price, they updated the pin mark on the map of the location. It looked like a big bunch of trees which would have never worked for us. Then I looked at the pictures and the land looked different. It was open and flat with some trees.
After looking at the map, I figured out where the land was. It was on the correct road but a little more east than the picture showed. When I looked at the pictures, I just knew it was going to be great!
I sent Cam a text of the listing and he ended up calling me on the phone from work. I was able to tell Cam over the phone where the property was located and that the price just dropped so we needed to see it ASAP! He agreed and said we could meet at lunch to look at it.
The land has 52 acres. 44 acres are up on a hilltop and 8 acres run right along a creek bed. There are two ponds and the live water at the creek.
The road driving in had some rundown homes that were interesting but that is what you get when you have no rules (yay!) and live in the country.
The upper 44 acres had a very steep road up but once you get to the top it was pretty flat along the pasture areas. There are 25 acres of flat, open pasture and 20 acres of trees and more sloped areas. We wanted a combination of timber and pasture for privacy and for providing our own wood heat.
It is very private once you are up there (only one small house is visible a half mile away) and so beautiful. I may have cried when seeing how awesome it was but don’t tell anybody 😉
So after we looked at it the first time Cam went back to work and I went home. I wanted to make an offer like right then and there but level headed Cam wanted to sleep on it and do a little research first.
Except at about 3pm that afternoon, I got a text from Cameron saying that he got a hold of our realtor and asked him to prepare an offer, haha! We figured that our offer which was lower than asking but not extremely low, would get a counter and that would give us time to do more research about what needed to be done to build a home on the land.
So we did end up researching and figuring out the details during the few days we were waiting for the current owners to answer back. And of course the offer was contingent on the land passing the Perc test so we could put a house up there.
The owners did counter and they met us right in the middle. We had two days until we needed to respond so we debated on whether or not we should ask for them to include the tractor in the purchase or do some of our closing costs.
We opted not to ask for the tractor since those have such a huge range in price depending on the make and model. Cameron and I were calling on everything that needed to be priced out during those few days. You can see my post about things to know and check on before buying homestead land HERE. We learned a lot about what you need for buying raw land.
Anyway, so on Tuesday the day we were supposed to respond, Cameron got ahold of the county water to ask a few questions. The guy on the phone was like “Someone just called me about this property yesterday!” So right away we knew that someone else was also looking at buying the land.
We opted not to ask for anything extra and just accept the owners counter offer. I had Cameron talk to our realtor twice to check and make sure our acceptance got in on time and that no one else could buy it. Thankfully, we are legitimately under contract! And we are so excited!!
Again, it just feels too good to be true- and I don’t mean that in a bad way like we are getting swindled, just that we have been looking for so long that to find such an awesome place seems unreal! I’m hoping the Perc test goes ok, and that everything else lines up so we are able to close… The date is toward the end of March. And don’t worry you’ll hear what happens either way!
