To Build, Or Not to Build--Or Let's Keep Looking
Yesterday my friend Jack took me to see four houses that are on the market here in our neighborhood. It was instructional, and it came after I told Jack and his wife Laura about my grandiose scheme to build a huge addition onto our little house on Mountain Road in order to give yours truly his own space. As I showed them the plans we had created with the help of a designer friend, they politely looked them over and had a few good ideas and tweaks.
But Jack kept on hammering home his main point--that buying a new house made much more sense than trying to cobble a large addition onto this little house that may take many months, and inevitably will cost more than I think. Our plans called for three new bathrooms, egads, and lots of expensive things like radiant heat etc. I am beginning to feel that it will slip away from me, and become the Big Dig of Deerfield. Oh, I hate my indecision and my quick turns from one idea to the next...sometimes it's a blessing, as it gives me inspiration to do things like, well, open a cafe, on a lark. But other times this quickness is a flaw, and I need to think more clearly.
So yesterday Jack rode me around in his Lincoln to see first a large ranch with two levels over on Hillside Road. Wow! This place is huge, with nearly a full set of rooms on the bottom floor and then a bountiful amount of rooms and open space on the main floor. The pricetag a little steep, but wow, this is much better than what I can build.
Then we saw another, more basic big house that was set at the end of a dead-end road, backing up to lots of open space. Wow! Another place that might work. So here I was, I've paid quite a lot for real plans and begun talking with builders and now I'm looking at real estate and might not build anything at all.
Oh, what do to? I guess the answer is to see more houses, cut my losses with the designs, and try to get a sign from somewhere....above?
But Jack kept on hammering home his main point--that buying a new house made much more sense than trying to cobble a large addition onto this little house that may take many months, and inevitably will cost more than I think. Our plans called for three new bathrooms, egads, and lots of expensive things like radiant heat etc. I am beginning to feel that it will slip away from me, and become the Big Dig of Deerfield. Oh, I hate my indecision and my quick turns from one idea to the next...sometimes it's a blessing, as it gives me inspiration to do things like, well, open a cafe, on a lark. But other times this quickness is a flaw, and I need to think more clearly.
So yesterday Jack rode me around in his Lincoln to see first a large ranch with two levels over on Hillside Road. Wow! This place is huge, with nearly a full set of rooms on the bottom floor and then a bountiful amount of rooms and open space on the main floor. The pricetag a little steep, but wow, this is much better than what I can build.
Then we saw another, more basic big house that was set at the end of a dead-end road, backing up to lots of open space. Wow! Another place that might work. So here I was, I've paid quite a lot for real plans and begun talking with builders and now I'm looking at real estate and might not build anything at all.
Oh, what do to? I guess the answer is to see more houses, cut my losses with the designs, and try to get a sign from somewhere....above?
posted by Max Hartshorne at 7:20 AM
1 Comments:
I don't know if this will work, but you could try lowballing offers on new places. There was an article about lowballing in the Times recently and it has certainly worked for me in the past. Maybe in today's market, it would work again.
That would take the sting off what you lost in paying for plans.
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