Habebimus il Domus?

Domiciles for the Destitute!
Over the weekend we drove up to Visalia to look for a new house. For those of you that don't know, we spent 5 months looking for a house last year, including 45 days of escrow before the seller backed out on use. We put in on average 4 offers per week during that time period, and we were always out bid; even when we were going $20,000 over the seller's asking price. Recently we had been looking for new houses down in the Fullerton area, but we discovered that the waiting lists were 200+ people long, and that the few existing places that we could afford were selling out the day that they were released. This discouraged us to the point of looking else where, so that is why we ended up looking in Visalia (there are other reasons too, but that is all you need to know for now.) I used to work for a housing company in Visalia (Centex Homes) and at that time all you had to do to buy a house was to walk in and give them money; no waiting lists or anything. This was very appealing to us. So we went up to Visalia and low and behold we discovered that the housing market there is booming even more than it is in Orange county. Apperently everyone in Orange/LA county and the Bay area are getting fed up with prices and are all moving to the Visalia area. For reference, there are 20+ new housing sites in Visalia alone, with an average of 80 people on each waiting list per site. We went to more than 15 of those sites, and were able to narrow our options down to a couple of places. Our final choices being Ennis Homes or Centex Homes. My mom called our friend Gail (the real estate queen) and Gail recommended that we not go with Centex as they are known to have quality issues (something I concur with having worked for them) so we decided to go with the Ennis Homes design that we had picked out.
Now, Ennis Homes had a long waiting list just like every one else. We were looking at one developement on the south side of Visalia, but they did not have the model that we were interested in, so they told us that we should go to the north side of town where they had another developement. We got up there, and we were told that the model was closed due to a bee invasion. We told the agent at the office that we had driven all the way across town to look at that specific model (this meant something to him, even though "all the way across town" is a 10-15 minute drive), and that we were willing to risk the bees in order to look at it. He checked it out to make sure it was safe, and relented and let us in. We were the only people that got to see that model the entire day. After looking at the model, I was absolutely in love with it, and was determined to get it. As we walked back into the office the agent mentioned to us that if we liked that particular model he had one avaliable for immediate buy. This was rather startling as we were not at all expecting to be able to do that at that point in time. We talked to him about it, and went and looked at the Centex place one more time, and decided (with Gail's help) that we would get the Ennis Home option. The reason it was avaliable for immediate sale is that they had to build 12 houses a month in order to meet some contract, and for some reason they were not getting any one interested in that particular model at that time. So they had to go ahead an pick the model to go on the lot and pick the first phase of options(we still get to pick some stuff, like counter and carpet color) and started to prepare to build the house. Construction will begin in the first part of May so they were really needing someone to come along and buy it. This all sounded great to us, even though it means we won't be able to get a couple of the options that we would have liked. So we went back and told the agent that we want the house, and he said that it is ours. We will be driving up to Visalia again this weekend to sign the contract at 2:30pm on Saturday. We will also be selecting the few remaining options at that time as well. We got our loan pre-approval last night with the builder's lender, so everything is going good on that front. I'm having a great (not really) time talking to about 5 different lenders trying to find the best loan, as well as trying to figure out what a fully underwritten pre-approval letter is (it is different than a normal pre-approval letter, but I can't figure out how). We should be able to get around 5.5% for our loan, which is fairly good.
The biggest down side right now is that the house won't be ready for move-in till December (since they still have to build it). Our plan is that we will keep our current jobs in LA and just work three days in the office, and the other two from home. So basically we will drive down Monday morning, and return Wednesday night. We have a couple of people that have stated that we could stay with them while we are down so that is covered. We are excited because this way we will still be able to see all of our friends, as well as not having to find new jobs. The drive will stink of course, but I love driving, and ultimately I won't be doing that much more driving than I already do. Another great thing is that Fresno State offers a parasiteology masters degree, so Deb will be applying for that soon. It is really starting to look like this is a great oppertunity for both of us.
On to the juicy details! (not for the faint of heart)
The house will be built on a 13000sqft. lot at the end of a culdisac (sp?). The rest of the lots on the street average about 8000sqft., so we will be getting one of the biggest lots. All the other lots are so small that they have to build two story houses on them. This will boost up our property value, as our house is the biggest plan that they offered. We were a little worried that we would end up surrounded by small houses, which would have hurt the value. The other neighborhoods around us have million dollar+ houses in them, including the nicest neighboorhood in Visalia, so that will help our value as well. The Centex neighborhood down the street was going up in value about $9000 per month, so we are hoping that trend will continue with our house too.
Here is a link to the house plan.
Here is a link to the google satilite image of our neighborhood. There is a brown rectangle at the bottom of the map, just outside of the blurry area. That is where the house will be. Pay no attention to the address marker, as that is just where the model homes are.
We have a video of the interior of the house with a voice over by Deb that I can post if you all would like it. It is fairly large, and is about 15 minutes long, so I will wait for someone to say they want to see it before I post it.
I think that is all for now. We will keep you posted as we find out more information.