The last few months have been quite a crazy period for us, filled with serious decision making. When we moved to Baxter in the summer of 2007, we built a house with 3 bedrooms. It was huge to us, having come from several years of apartment living. Plus, it was only the two of us and at that point still not sure when/if/how a family expansion plan would work out and if the cultural metropolis of Fort Mill, SC was really the place we would want to live long term.
Since then we have come to absolutely fall in love with our life here and the familial atmosphere of the community. Baxter Village is definitely where we want to stay! We played with the idea of up-sizing in Baxter, and left that thought in the back of our minds. Over the summer we learned that the opportunities to build a custom home in the neighborhood were dwindling, and if we wanted to be able to build our “Dream House” in our “dream ‘hood” we would have to act quickly. Over the course of about a month, we had listed our current house and put down a deposit with the builder for an amazing house at the end of a beautiful cul-de-sac. Our friend and realtor Scott, reminded us that the last few months of the year are really a slow time for real estate transactions, and that we should be prepared to probably not have too much action until the Spring. We understood this completely, and stalled on the start of new construction for a bit to give us a buffer to avoid having to pay 2 mortgages on houses less than a mile from one another.
Fast forward from October 10,2011, the day that our house hit the market, to December 27, 2011. Right after one of the best Christmas’ of all time, we found ourselves with piles of gifts, bags of trash, and about 2 hours notification before an appointment request. We sucked it up, and cleaned the house like crazy people—shoving baskets of laundry into the storage space over the garage, and gifts under the bed—and headed out for a relaxing “lunch” while some potential buyers looked through the house, all the while hoping they didn’t look *too closely* in the cabinets and such. Whatever we did worked, and before NYE we had an offer in hand, and a smile on our face. With a relatively uneventful appraisal and inspection, we were able to close today, 2/3/2012 and will be staying here (renting from the new owners) until 2/15/2012 when we head up to NH to kill some time while Casa de Gray, part deux is finished. We couldn’t be happier that it all worked out so well! We are looking forward to popping a bottle of Champagne to celebrate!