Settling into our New Home and State
Settling into our New Home and State
At the beginning of 2022, we sold our home in Las Vegas, moved to Florida, started a new job, and had a baby. So, it’s been a pretty busy year for the Miller family. After selling our house in just a few days, Bea and Jameson flew to Florida while the dogs and a friend made a three-day journey across the country to Florida with me. To say it was a long drive is an understatement. But some of the landscapes we saw were beautiful, while others were not so beautiful.
Once we all made it, we moved into my parent’s house in Saint Petersburg for a couple of months. Though it was a little cramped and tensions ran high, we were able to figure out how to co-habitat until we were finally able to find and purchase a home that was not only within our budget but something that would also fit all of us. To say the home search was easy would be a complete lie. The housing market around the world was going crazy at the time we sold our home in Vegas (which was good for us). But it made it very hard to find a home within our budget in Florida.
And speaking of budgets, our’s kept getting smaller and smaller the longer we looked. Finding employment after the service was not as easy as I thought it would be, but that is a story for another post.
After lowering our maximum budget to $400,000 and narrowing down what we wanted, the search was on. We quickly realized that we could not afford to live in St. Petersburg, so our search expanded farther north and south. Homes were selling for $500,000 or more for a 900 sq ft house, which is crazy. We found a few homes we liked in some HOA communities, but none had a decent backyard, and the CDD/HOA fees were out of control.
We ended up putting offers on two separate homes, one in Tampa and one in the Brandon area. But the one in Tampa did not pass inspection and would have cost a small fortune to bring back up to code. The previous owners converted the garage into a giant bonus room, but they wired the ceiling fans with an extension cord hardwired in the ceiling and spray foamed the space between the garage door (which was still in place) and the new wall. For the other home we put in an offer for, we rescinded the offer because our kick-ass realtor was able to get us into the one we ultimately ended up purchasing.
