Sunnyside
We have gone under contract with the Sunnyside house. (The one that had the full price cash offer on the first day, which recently fell through.) I'm still hesitant to get excited because we have some hurdles to cross. I'll get to what those are, but I figured this was a good time to lay out the reasons why we've determined this house to be perfect for us. Even if we don't end up in this house, this is a major moment in our journey and therefore worth documenting.
Before I begin, I think we should cover some hilarious features of this house so that we can just get those off the table right away.
First, this over-the-top water sculpture featuring multiple dolphins spitting water into the pool. Where do you even buy a thing like that?
Also, the house is the color of baby poo. It was built in the 1980s, and it most definitely looks typical of an 80s house in Scottsdale. But, how, why, what ever made that an acceptable color? In my next life, when we win the lottery, we will re-stucco the house so it's smooth and paint it off-white. But if we get this house, this awful shade of brown will be the color of the Millers. I can guarantee that baby poo never looked so good on a family!
The best feature of all is...wait for it...this most spectacularly ridiculous ocean mural over the wet bar, which extends onto the ceiling. That is a real shark on a floating glass shelf, in case you were wondering. How is it even possible that a person or company offers such a product? Does any other house in all of America have something like that? I still can't believe my eyes every time I see it. If we get the house, we will work on getting it off the wall at some point. I think we should hang onto it for a couple of weeks, just for laughs.
So now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's get to why this house checks off every single box for us, and more! We wanted certain things in a house but thought that surely we'd end up in a place missing one or two of those things. Not the case with this house. The only thing lacking is that it's in a strong second-best location, with McCormick Ranch being the best of the best. The location is 96th and Cactus, which I previously thought was the best location, but I've changed my mind. You can't really walk to anything, but you're a very close drive to almost everything, so it's more than good enough for us. Any house in McCormick Ranch would be a better location but would leave us with a few boxes un-checked. A second-best location is perfectly fine and actually a best-case scenario.
Box #1: A pool. This is easy to come by in Arizona. This one has an attached hot tub with a fire pit in-between. (Don't forget the dolphins.)
Box #2: A 3-car garage. Also not too tough to come by, but we really did want a non-tract house, which makes this box a little tougher to check. You have to go through an electric gate to get into the garage, which is neither a good or bad thing. The garage is attached, which is a plus. You'd be amazed at how many unattached garages are out there!
Box #3: No HOA. This house has a lot of land and more than enough space to park our camper trailer, which will save us a lot of money and hassle. Plus, you can dump the water from the camper directly into the sewer here instead of stopping at a random dumping station on your way home from camp.
Box #4: (And this is a big one.) A guest house! The unfinished guest house will be our first project to tackle. We will love having a place for our Oregon family to come visit us and feel right at home. We've looked at a few other homes with guest houses, but none of them were perfect in any other way, so this is a real bonus. Plus, it has a view deck on top!
The bonuses:
It has like three putting greens for Dylan, a huge golf enthusiast with a brand new set of clubs in his arsenal. Also, the backyard features this fire pit in the corner, in case you're not into the hot tub/swimming pool fire pit. Basically, the backyard is totally awesome.
A huge system of solar panels. We love the idea of solar! This might actually end up being a hurdle in closing the deal (which I'll get to in a bit), but we'd be pretty stoked at getting most of our energy from the sun.
The actual house is a good size with a floorplan that makes a lot of sense to us. It's not perfect, but nothing will be. It has a formal living room, which is a waste of space for us and the master closets and laundry room are pretty small. The kitchen, along with everything else, needs to be updated, and some day I'd like to tear down some walls. The floors are carpet and tile and wood and everything in-between, so I'd like to redo all of it. I'm not sure if that will happen.
We loved the idea of a fixer-upper, and this house could use a lot of updating. We are at the top of our budget with this one, so we will have to just wait on that. Everything about it is totally livable, though, and with all things considered, I'm okay with waiting to beautify the place and doing it little by little.
The house is promising, but the problems are plenty. We have several major factors that could blow up this deal. First, that is a HUGE system of solar panels, and it is leased. Leases on solar panels are awful...in a few years, we could be paying twice what a regular electric bill with no solar would be. To buy the system would be tens of thousands of dollars. It's just a really tough deal. We really want solar, but we don't want to sign up for something that doesn't make sense.
The house recently had an inspection from the buyer who just pulled out. Though it didn't reveal anything major, we know that lots of stuff showed up on the inspection report. We're not that worried about it. Or rather, I should say this does not come as a surprise. The house is 30-something years old, after all. We'll have to see what kind of expense we're in for once we do our own inspection. First of all, the HVAC system is not new. It probably has a few good years left in it, but replacing air conditioning units and updating everything is not cheap, as you know.
And lastly, getting the guest house permitted may prove to be difficult and interesting. We just don't know. The water and sewer lines are trenched to the structure, but nothing has been run into the building yet. We'll have to get a plumber out there to assess a few things. It is framed on the inside and apparently was originally built to be a garage. We need to make sure it's actually possible to get this thing set up like we need it to be.
So, there you have it. It's a lot to digest. I'm cautiously optimistic. Actually, I'm just trying not to think about it too much. My energy stores when it comes to buying/selling a house are exhausted. The emotion is all used up. If everything comes together and we find ourselves moving into this house just after Thanksgiving, it will feel surreal. But it will also be scary because we will be floating two houses at once. Everything good comes with a price, and it's a risk we're willing to take. Also, I think this house is better for us than the basement house in McCormick Ranch that I've been eyeing for weeks for a lot of reasons. But, I've spent so much time thinking about that basement house and just loving the fact that our kids could walk to elementary school if we lived there, and I'd just have to get over that. I had the whole renovation planned in my head, including closing in an outdoor patio to create a large pantry and drop zone and using an entire bedroom upstairs to extend the master suite. Oh well, it was good practice, I guess. Anyway, the outcome is in God's hands...I'm just along for the ride!
Before I begin, I think we should cover some hilarious features of this house so that we can just get those off the table right away.
First, this over-the-top water sculpture featuring multiple dolphins spitting water into the pool. Where do you even buy a thing like that?
Also, the house is the color of baby poo. It was built in the 1980s, and it most definitely looks typical of an 80s house in Scottsdale. But, how, why, what ever made that an acceptable color? In my next life, when we win the lottery, we will re-stucco the house so it's smooth and paint it off-white. But if we get this house, this awful shade of brown will be the color of the Millers. I can guarantee that baby poo never looked so good on a family!
The best feature of all is...wait for it...this most spectacularly ridiculous ocean mural over the wet bar, which extends onto the ceiling. That is a real shark on a floating glass shelf, in case you were wondering. How is it even possible that a person or company offers such a product? Does any other house in all of America have something like that? I still can't believe my eyes every time I see it. If we get the house, we will work on getting it off the wall at some point. I think we should hang onto it for a couple of weeks, just for laughs.
So now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's get to why this house checks off every single box for us, and more! We wanted certain things in a house but thought that surely we'd end up in a place missing one or two of those things. Not the case with this house. The only thing lacking is that it's in a strong second-best location, with McCormick Ranch being the best of the best. The location is 96th and Cactus, which I previously thought was the best location, but I've changed my mind. You can't really walk to anything, but you're a very close drive to almost everything, so it's more than good enough for us. Any house in McCormick Ranch would be a better location but would leave us with a few boxes un-checked. A second-best location is perfectly fine and actually a best-case scenario.
Box #1: A pool. This is easy to come by in Arizona. This one has an attached hot tub with a fire pit in-between. (Don't forget the dolphins.)
Box #2: A 3-car garage. Also not too tough to come by, but we really did want a non-tract house, which makes this box a little tougher to check. You have to go through an electric gate to get into the garage, which is neither a good or bad thing. The garage is attached, which is a plus. You'd be amazed at how many unattached garages are out there!
Box #3: No HOA. This house has a lot of land and more than enough space to park our camper trailer, which will save us a lot of money and hassle. Plus, you can dump the water from the camper directly into the sewer here instead of stopping at a random dumping station on your way home from camp.
Box #4: (And this is a big one.) A guest house! The unfinished guest house will be our first project to tackle. We will love having a place for our Oregon family to come visit us and feel right at home. We've looked at a few other homes with guest houses, but none of them were perfect in any other way, so this is a real bonus. Plus, it has a view deck on top!
The bonuses:
It has like three putting greens for Dylan, a huge golf enthusiast with a brand new set of clubs in his arsenal. Also, the backyard features this fire pit in the corner, in case you're not into the hot tub/swimming pool fire pit. Basically, the backyard is totally awesome.
A huge system of solar panels. We love the idea of solar! This might actually end up being a hurdle in closing the deal (which I'll get to in a bit), but we'd be pretty stoked at getting most of our energy from the sun.
The actual house is a good size with a floorplan that makes a lot of sense to us. It's not perfect, but nothing will be. It has a formal living room, which is a waste of space for us and the master closets and laundry room are pretty small. The kitchen, along with everything else, needs to be updated, and some day I'd like to tear down some walls. The floors are carpet and tile and wood and everything in-between, so I'd like to redo all of it. I'm not sure if that will happen.
We loved the idea of a fixer-upper, and this house could use a lot of updating. We are at the top of our budget with this one, so we will have to just wait on that. Everything about it is totally livable, though, and with all things considered, I'm okay with waiting to beautify the place and doing it little by little.
The house is promising, but the problems are plenty. We have several major factors that could blow up this deal. First, that is a HUGE system of solar panels, and it is leased. Leases on solar panels are awful...in a few years, we could be paying twice what a regular electric bill with no solar would be. To buy the system would be tens of thousands of dollars. It's just a really tough deal. We really want solar, but we don't want to sign up for something that doesn't make sense.
The house recently had an inspection from the buyer who just pulled out. Though it didn't reveal anything major, we know that lots of stuff showed up on the inspection report. We're not that worried about it. Or rather, I should say this does not come as a surprise. The house is 30-something years old, after all. We'll have to see what kind of expense we're in for once we do our own inspection. First of all, the HVAC system is not new. It probably has a few good years left in it, but replacing air conditioning units and updating everything is not cheap, as you know.
And lastly, getting the guest house permitted may prove to be difficult and interesting. We just don't know. The water and sewer lines are trenched to the structure, but nothing has been run into the building yet. We'll have to get a plumber out there to assess a few things. It is framed on the inside and apparently was originally built to be a garage. We need to make sure it's actually possible to get this thing set up like we need it to be.
So, there you have it. It's a lot to digest. I'm cautiously optimistic. Actually, I'm just trying not to think about it too much. My energy stores when it comes to buying/selling a house are exhausted. The emotion is all used up. If everything comes together and we find ourselves moving into this house just after Thanksgiving, it will feel surreal. But it will also be scary because we will be floating two houses at once. Everything good comes with a price, and it's a risk we're willing to take. Also, I think this house is better for us than the basement house in McCormick Ranch that I've been eyeing for weeks for a lot of reasons. But, I've spent so much time thinking about that basement house and just loving the fact that our kids could walk to elementary school if we lived there, and I'd just have to get over that. I had the whole renovation planned in my head, including closing in an outdoor patio to create a large pantry and drop zone and using an entire bedroom upstairs to extend the master suite. Oh well, it was good practice, I guess. Anyway, the outcome is in God's hands...I'm just along for the ride!
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