So you are probably wondering why I have not posted anything yet about the house and how it’s coming along. Well, we have run into a few snags. You may recall that in my email blast last October, I mentioned that things don’t seem to move very fast here in Texas. Well that is certainly an understatement where our house was concerned. To make a very long story short, the developer of the new subdivision where we were supposed to build was unable to get the City of Waco to approve all the necessary permits to develop the land. From what we gathered the City of Waco would need to install a water pumping station to accommodate this new development and they were dragging their feet on this.
After we returned from NYC at Christmas, Trace and I decided to talk to the developer directly and find out what the timeline would be. Needless to say, both Trace and I are tired of apartment living and paying $$$ for both rent and storage fees. When we spoke with the developer, he told us that our builder wouldn’t be able to start on our house until probably September or October of 2020 AT THE EARLIEST! I just about blew a gasket when he told us that.
But then I calmed down and Trace and I talked about it and we decided to abandon the idea of building in that new development and look to build elsewhere. We spoke with our builder, and thankfully he agreed with us and was able to get back our earnest money. Trace and I scoured the area for a place to build and were able to come up with a lot in an already established neighborhood. It’s a gorgeous subdivision called Stone Creek Ranch and it is in fact where our builder lives.
Problem was that this lot was already owned by another builder. Our builder contacted this other builder and he agreed to sell this lot to us outright. We closed on the lot on Wednesday, 12 February 2020. So we are now proud landowners in the great state of Texas! The lot is slightly smaller than the lot we would have had in the new development (0.4 acres v. 0.5 acres), but the house (as originally designed) will still fit nicely on the lot with less yard to take care of.
If you look at the top of my website blog, that is a picture of our lot in Stone Creek Ranch.
So now that we own the land, we needed to get the contract going with our builder. After some negotiating on both sides (yes, we engaged a lawyer to help us out with all of the “legalities”), the contract was finally signed about two weeks ago (02 Mar 2020 to be exact). So now, our builder has engaged the engineers to design our foundation. Last Friday, they collected soil samples for analysis and based on those results, will design the plan for our foundation. Meanwhile, our builder is securing all the necessary permits, etc. Groundbreaking should happen within next week or two. Then all the fun begins.