In July, I was driving around looking at new construction homes, and every day I was looking for houses posted for sale. I just had the sudden urge or push even though we had planned to look in the fall, and move around December. I found a development in the city we've been living in but the prices were crazy high starting around 500,000. Coming from New Mexico, these prices seem outrageous! I decided to look on their website to find other developments that they had. I saw they had another one where the house is were starting at 297,000. It's in a little town called Scappoose of only about 7,000 people. It's about 20 minutes from where we were living. So one afternoon, Patrick and I decided to go take a look at the development. We had been to the town before, and liked it it, was cute. We looked at the model homes, and really liked one in particular that had a third story Loft area. After lots of back and forth for a week or two, we decide to go ahead and try to purchase one. It's quite different here than it was a New Mexico, they only released like four lots at a time, and they were already pre-planned with what model of house was going to go on what lot. We didn't really have much say in anything. We just knew the model that we wanted and had to wait for them to release the next one. We didn't want to wait too long, because each time they released more lots, they'd raise the price. I believe, on July 27th we entered into contract on our home. It was already well under construction. It was set to be complete the end of September. We came out and checked on it from time to time, but not nearly as much as when we were building our house in New Mexico. We closed on our house on September 29th. We've been in the house a little over a month, and we are still unpacking. We ended up paying with upgrades and everything a total of 314,000 which for the Portland area is a really great deal! Our home is 2,019 square feet. The yard isn't very big, it's obviously not our Dream House, but it's so nice to be in our own home again finally. We have a commute to work and school, but it's one of the prettiest commutes ever. We live right on the Columbia River. It's been fun to slowly explore the town and find out what's here. We have lots of plans to fix up the house and do some upgrades over time. I'll post some pictures of the process of the house being built and where we are now.
