As I was writing this post about part 2 of our reset, Russia invaded Ukraine. My heart aches for the tens of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled their homes and their country. At the same time I am in awe of their bravery, resilience, and even defiance. So often, it seems, we see the best of people in the worst of times. 

Selling was easy. Finding another house was the “challenge. “ 

Most people find a new home first and then sell their current home. We flipped that process. It wasn’t intentional, but that’s the way it worked out. Frankly, we took advantage of a fast-moving market in Chicagoland where we were selling. The market in Columbus was equally competitive, but here we have the advantage of accessible short-term housing in our son’s rental property, which was coincidentally available. We’re lucky, because finding a home was an exercise in flexibility.

Our initial home search in Columbus had turned up options, but nothing we wanted to move into.  As it turned out, the day our old house went on the market, we retuned to Columbus for more searching. The next two days were a split screen adventure. The whole time we were out looking (but not finding) with the realtor, our phones were pinging to alert us to appointments to view our existing home. (Stressful even as our Chicagoland realtors handled the responses.)

Just to make life more interesting, the temperature was hovering in the teens and the heat stopped working in my husband’s car. (Are we having fun yet?) Within 48 hours we were on a conference call with the Chicago area realtors, debating a handful of offers. 

Buying is all about compromise.

The market in Columbus is as tight as that in Chicago, but our realtor did an excellent job of reading the marketplace tea leaves as well as Steve and me. We gravitated to “patio homes” — free-standing ranch homes with exterior maintenance included. Depending on the builder and the development, these communities may also include a community center, work-out facility, pool, pickle ball court, etc. Some are as small as 40 for 50 houses, others have as many as a few hundred. Some are limited to buyers over 55, some are not. 

The houses we looked at were all nice, offering first floor master suites, guest rooms with private baths, a den or office, and often a roomy upstairs loft for a second living space. We saw several I could have happily moved into — except for their locations: surrounded by apartment complexes, backed up to busy highways or under high tension wires. I kept repeating the real estate mantra to myself: location, location, location.

Our other option was a three bedroom/two bath ranch. It was non-existent on the market, though we did eventually see one under construction. We only looked at three previously owned houses, all of them patio homes. There just wasn’t anything on the market. Is this January or the marketplace in general?

Obviously we were looking for a new build.

Eventually we boiled our choices down to two builders with appealing locations and spent time with each of them, working thru options from lot choice and siding to trim packages. Steve and I are like-minded about much of this, so the process was not necessarily painful and we knew it was all tentative. But then we hit a wall. 

And the wall had a huge calendar on it.

Building from the ground up takes close to a year, from final plans to permitting to construction. Today’s supply chain and labor shortages complicate these schedules, and builders only release two or three lots each month. After all the looking and learning, we both came to the same conclusion at about the same time: we just didn’t want to spend a year building a house. We are both a little (maybe even a lot) impatient. After nearly two years of pandemic living we needed to keep the reset moving forward.

Were we making progress or spinning our wheels?

Things begin falling into place.

After a few days of decision paralysis, we took a deep breath and headed back to Columbus and our tireless realtor, this time looking for something already under construction, but perhaps not our ideal floorplan. We found a house by one of the builders we liked. It was in an over 55 community (not a pre-requisite, but not a deal breaker either). There were no high-tension wires, busy highways, or looming apartment complexes outside the front or back doors. In fact the setting was fairly bucolic with a stocked pond and walking trails.

After looking at the second house — and we really scrutinized it — Steve and I and the realtor got back in the car and headed to the next house we’d planned to view. We were each quietly weighing the merits of this last house when one of us (I can’t remember who) posed the question: was there a reason not to choose the patio home in the over-55 community? It checked all our boxes for living space and bedrooms, the kitchen design was very close to what we had and loved, we liked the location, and it would be finished in late April, a reasonable wait in our son’s rental since we needed to be out of our current home the first week in March. 

For the sake of comparison, we finished that day’s “tour” looking at two more houses. The first was nestled close to the dreaded high-tension wires (really, they were everywhere!!). The last was a three bedroom/three bath ranch under construction in a more traditional development. It was a great house, but frankly just more house and more lot than we need. Five or ten years ago, I would have jumped at it, now not so much. And maybe our minds were made up. 

So now we are living in Columbus and waiting for the house with the alternate floorplan to be finished. We just stopped by and the painters are finishing up the window trim; we think floors are next. We’ve never owned a “new build” before, so this is fun for us.

Our quest for a reset was never about building a dream home, and I think that was to our advantage. When we switched floorpans, we gave up a butler’s pantry but got a sunroom and a patio. We traded locations from one 20 minutes north of our kids to one 20 minutes east. Neither one was a bad trade off.  And the over-55 thing? Five or six years ago I would have pooh-poohed the idea. Now I think that since everyone is new (many of them also new to Columbus as we are and on the same “get-close-to-the-grandchildren” mission), we’ll make friends quickly. And when we get tired of hanging out with the over-55 crowd, our kids and our grandkids are just down the road. 

There’s more to come in this moving story, including two packed moving pods, a storage space for leftovers, the Kitchen Aid mixer we left behind, and a missing can opener. But without a few missteps, moving would be almost simple, right?

Thanks for stopping by. See you again soon