House Hunting: Family Edition
This post is about our house hunting journey upsizing our family home.
A couple weeks ago my dad called with an idea. He asked if we would be interested in either buying a property to build a new house, or find an existing home that would fit our must haves.
Mind you, we weren’t exactly looking to move but as our family is expanding we figured now would a good time if we found something.
So we contacted our realtor and began the house hunting process.
Why we’re house hunting
Now that you know we are exploring the idea of selling, I wanted to go over our reasons behind the decision.
It’s no surprise that this past year has changed a lot of things, like peoples perspectives of whats important to them. My parents were no exception, for them they of course want to be close to their grandkids and to be close to town.
They currently live at our cottage half of the year, which is on an island. It just limits them and of course the uncertainty of the ferry transportation can be a hassle.
Which we thought why not sell our house (make some money on it), and purchase a property to build everything we want. For the price of our current home, we could either buy a property to build or renovate.
With the help of my parents we would essentially be upsizing for the same price. They offered to pay the difference to build something for them, which I would love to do regardless.
The Downside of selling
I shared behind the scenes of our house hunting journey, and I was recently asked about building, permits and zoning . So I will be sharing a kind of beginners guide to building in a few days (so make sure you stay tuned).
There is always something that comes up when buying a new house or even new property. There are a lot of things you need to research and look into before making your decision.
Personally, for us it was the time it would take to build a home and where we would live in the mean time.
We are having another baby and I’m due early summer, so I definitely don’t want to be moving from place to place. I didn’t mind moving into a smaller space for a short time. If it meant we would move into our dream home in a couple months.
HOUSE 1: Every Mans Dream House
Recently we came across the ultimate guys dream house.
I decided this would be the perfect name for this listing after I saw a few friends sharing it, tagging their husbands in what they called “their dream home”.
This two car garage with a living space above it, is exactly the thing that caught my dads eye. Moving into a one bedroom apartment above a garage sounds simple, but we wanted the property to potentially build a secondary structure.
After we did some research, contacted our local township and did some digging on certain zoning issues. We came to the conclusion it would be a lot more of a problem adding onto an existing structure than we thought.
The biggest issue for us was that the town wouldn’t allow a separate structure with a bathroom and kitchen. We sent many emails back and forth to see if there was a way to get permits for another building. I even reached out to some architect friends and asked their opinion to see if there was even a possibility to structurally attach a separate structure.
At the end of the day, we knew those signs the you found the right house, just weren’t there.
My dad and Tony would have loved to live above a two car garage, what guy wouldn’t? but I knew I wouldn’t be able to leave our three bedroom bungalow for anything less than a two story home.
So if you’re reading this, and this sounds like something that would suit your lifestyle, well it’s definitely a great property! (if you aren’t planning on building on it again).
When house hunting, take into account the proximity of any potential home to your place of employment, the charm of the neighborhood, the orientation of the home on the lot, ease of access, noise from neighbors, traffic, and pets, as well as proximity to parks, shopping, schools, and public transportation.
Thank you! I couldn’t agree more.