Since we made the decision to sell our prior home and move a year ago, it’s high time I finally address the question… Why did we move? A question we have received over and over again. Many of you, like we had, fell in love with our prior home and saying goodbye made no sense, for many.
I get it! Our prior home was incredible. We loved it. We poured our hearts into it, and it changed our lives. Had you told me in December of 2021: Erin you will sell your home in January of 2022- I wouldn’t have believed you. That’s how unplanned this all was. But here is how it happened…
I was driving home from a workout and took a route I usually don’t; a song came on the radio I wanted to hear so I took the long way. What a Man by Salt n’Peppa if you must know…. Anyway, that’s when I saw a for sale sign on a big beautiful white and brick historic home on the corner.
I parked in front, pulled up the listing on Zillow, called Matthew and told him to call our realtor Charlotte. Ask her if she could get us in to see it; she got us in within the hour. We had Charlotte come over to our home at the time, after touring the new home that afternoon. We used this time to discuss what we could list our home for. Would it be enough to make the purchase of this new home possible? VERY long story short… It was. We could. We did.
The home prep, sale and escrow process was rapid speed, honestly a whirlwind and quite frankly, painful. It all happened so fast it was impossible to truly wrap my head around it all.
After it was all over and we moved I spent the first month in our new home mourning our old one. I had so much anxiety over the decision and the move. I was so unhappy and almost unwilling to love our new home. I felt like it had bewitched me into a bad decision… Im a touch dramatic. My husband on the other hand is very level headed and reassured me- he did not make this decision with emotion, but with logic and this house was the smart move and I didn’t make a huge mistake. After a while I accepted my old home was no longer my home, I let go and let the new home in. Now a year later I can confidently say it was absolutely the right call and I have no regrets.
So WHY why did you sell? You still haven’t answered! You didn’t need to. You didn’t plan to. The move was obviously emotional. You mourned your prior home for goodness sake. You stayed in the same town, in the same school district… MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
Okay okay okay… here’s the why. We had maxed out our prior homes potential. Beyond maxing out how we could upgrade the home and/or add more value, it was also truly not big enough for our day to day needs. There was also no way add-on to increase the footprint with the way the property lines were already utilized. It did not have a laundry room, guest room, office, entry way or even a proper front porch to shelter out of the weather when you get home on a stormy day. All things we were more than happy to accept because we truly didn’t believe we could afford bigger. We live in a VERY expensive area on the California coast and square footage comes with a hefty price tag. Then, in addition to our prior homes interior shortcomings, it was not walking distance to town or the beach (not a comfortable one at least). The architecture style was 70s modern and that has never been our cup of tea, we prefer colonial, cape cod, tudor and victorian homes. Very old, lots of character. This new home has everything the other did not, and could not have… plus an ocean view to top it off. Honestly we never dreamed we could afford a home like the one we are in now. It is only because of what we made our prior home into, that we could upgrade in the real estate game here. We had a chance and we took it. It was hard it was scary. I almost backed out… many times BUT it was the best decision. In a dream world I could afford to buy our old home back and turn it into headquarters for our business. I will always love that old home. A part of me will always miss it and I know for certain I will be forever grateful to it. It changed our lives, in every way possible. It is still changing our lives by letting us have this next adventure. At the end of the day, no matter what home we are in we are thankful we get to be in it here…
