Its been a little tense in our household lately because we’ve been planning on building our own home for quite some time now and finally at the last couple of week of December last year , we found a vacant lot that is just perfect for our plan. It is located in a well established neighborhood , great school , close to everything including hobby’s office and the price is just right for our budget.
So what are we waiting for?? Why not go for it??Well, it turns out that it is not that easy to purchase a piece of property.There are a number of steps that goes with it before you can sign the papers.You’d think we’ve done enough research about real estate stuff but surprisingly there’s a gargantuan legal procedures that you have to follow and we just talking about the LOT…there’s still the construction part of it which is another ball game.
Why didn’t we just buy a move-in ready house ??There are plenty of options in our area for any kind of house that you can afford .Beaverton and the nearby Hillsboro area is where big multimillion companies have set up their branches and headquarters (
such as Nikes, Intel, Google, Netflix) so the demand for houses, condos , townhomes and apartments is booming. That being said , most of the area are already developed and very few vacant lot are available for people who wants to build their own just like us. That’s why it has been taking this long till we found the ideal lot for our future home. Another reason why we decided to build is because we really wanted to have control on the over-all design of the house and even though we are talking about a huge mansion here , it is where we are gonna spend our lives and raise our kinds so it is very important for us to have a home were we will be comfortable make it really your own.
So ok, we found the lot. It’s the fist lot on a street with homes that are probably no more than 5 years old. Everything seems to look good and the seller is very accommodating to all of our questions. Before we could finalize the sale , there has to be some inspection done and we’ve found out that the lot might have some problem (
like the soil might not be stable enough to support the house ) . My husband is really pouring out all his attention to this project and I really appreciate his enthusiasm and efforts coz if it were just me , I would have just walked away and give up coz it is such a lot of work to begin with. But he is determined that this is what is really best for our family and I can’t argue with him on that because he is known for taking serious risk ( like marrying a somebody from the Philippines against all odds and his family’s disapproval) if his mind is set into something and he will definitely do every possible way he can to get what he wants. Tons of research , hours of phone calls , meeting etch etch.
Grant liked the location so much so I heis trying to make a away to make the plan possible and he is now in the process in making sure that the house will be safely built on a stable lot and minimize any problem.
Just to give you an idea of how we like the house to look like, here is a sample picture .Its over 2000sq feet , with 4 bedrooms 2 and a half bath . 2 car garage , and a bonus/media room upstairs. My husband best friend is a license builder and he is the perfect man for the job. I am very excited about this project but at the same time a little nervous because it’s a very big financial responsibility . We would really need to be extra careful with our spending and we also need to find ways to be more conservative and to be honest….cheap...I have no problem with that I think so long as we have rice in the pantry, we will never gonna be hungry.
In this process I learned a lot of things that are very important if you are planning on buying or building a house and I'd like to share a couple of useful websites.
Lets say you found a property and you want to find out if the price is right according to current market value. You can go to this website called Zillow.Com and you can type in the address of the property anywhere in the country that you are planning to buy and it will show you a map with homes in the surrounding neighborhood and information such as current price, size, numbers of bedroom etch etch. You can even zoom in and see the arial view of the property!! Now how cool is that!! It can give you an idea of value of your own property incase you plan on selling.
This next website also very useful for families who wanna make sure that their kids goes to a good school. You might have heard of it. Its called Greatschool.net. Type in your address or your neighborhood and it will show you every school with ratings from 1-10 , parents reviews, student to teacher ratio etch etch.. Some parents prefers a more diverse school or maybe they are looking for private or public…any kind of information that will help you rest assured that your children is getting the most out of their school.
And lastly ,did you know that Google has new feature called Streetview where in you can see the image of the location and its surrounding on an eye-level view?? Used to be just aerial or birds-eye view but now you can actually see the front of the property and its street without having to go there.Although this latest feature is fairly new and there are still many areas that they have not covered but pretty soon they will. I think the advantage is that it limits those scammers that sells property with all false discription and the buyers waste their time driving to the location and find out what a disappointment it was. The downside is , now everybody could see how your house looks like. Makes you rethink about those repairs that's been sitting for ages.Technology is really awesome.
I incorporated some aerobic work out as well so I don’t get bored with the machine. I had this work our video of Carmen Electra for while now and its one of my favorite work out coz it addresses all of muscle groups and the routine are quite challenging ( which I like) plus you get inspired by Carmen’s gorgeous physique that makes you tell yourself “ I wanna have that kind of body “.Today I weigh myself and I lost 1.5 pound.
My son found some magnets and thought that it will be fun to stick them on our TV screen while the color changes as he glides those little magnets and as a result was some discoloration on the screen. I freaked out because I thought we’ll gonna have to spend money on a new TV set. DH found a solution which was kinda cool so I thought I’d share them to you just in case you have the same problem. Its all here in this website http://www.woil.ws/fixmonitor/. 
