You can say that some things are meant to happen and fate just makes it so no matter what you plan.
After Valentines, our idea of building a new house cooled off somewhat and we once again began to look at buying a new house we could move right in. Unfortunately for us, two things worked against us. The first problem was that our neighbourhood was small and there were only a few houses available at anytime. The other problem was after reading books upon books about houses, I became pessimistic about the quality of houses builders or flippers sold. Machine cut brick/ stucco with faux moldings over OSB. Inadequate heating/ venting/ sealing of the house. It was more than just the quality but about the appearance of the house. From their top to bottom, inside and out multi-shades of brown and beige to their mixed up collage of victorian/ tudor/ italian/ french country style of design to their protruding double garage (see Book’s I read and you should too about designs). Even more than this, every one of these houses looked like some variation of the other with a complete lack of inspiration in design, style or colour. All of the care, quality and dedication you would like in your house thrown out the window to maximize profit to the largest number of potential buyers.
My wife and I actually did try to buy a house. A nice house completely renovated by the owners and with that it contained their own love and care that was evident in their design and style. We lost the bidding on that house and in June, we found ourselves in Vancouver attending the wedding of my younger brother with our house hunting the furthest thing from our minds. It was during that summer wedding along the seaside of Stanley Park that we got a call from our real estate agent. view from Stanley Park
The house was a bungalow sitting on a 52X145 foot lot in our neighbourhood with a lakefront view. We at first did not believe the agent because it was almost too perfect! The house met all the criteria for a house we could dream about (see “What’s the best land to start with…”). It just lacked one big item- and that was the perfect house itself. I would recommend to anyone considering to build a house to read this entire blog and reconsider it at least 6 more times because it is a large undertaking. It is stressful and both my wife and I knew that but after house hunting for almost a year and not being satisfied with what we saw available and being offered the prime location to build our ultimate dream home, my wife looked to me and said ‘buy it’. So that is just what we did.