The closing was today. The whole process was rather simple. The players in today’s meeting were our lender, Karrie, and the land owner/ real-estate attorney, Russ Holesinger, and the two of us, of course. Holesinger is kind of a big, well-established name in these parts. The land we’re building on used to part of Holesinger Farms. Russ is a successful attorney in town. We found out pretty early in the process that Russ is not only the owner and acting attorney, but he will also be our neighbor as he and his wife will be building on lot 10! To make things even sweeter, Russ brought cookies!
We signed some papers and wrote a check, (ate cookies), and wha-bam! We have a piece of land to call our own. We are not going to begin the building process until after we pay off the lot, so we have a "lot" of motivation to keep saving and living as frugally as possible. We have to digress to something completely off topic for a moment, but this will be relevant in the long run! We have a slight obsession with a local business called Freezer’s.
Freezer’s is the town ice cream shop and they have a rotating soft serve ice cream flavor schedule which changes every 2-3 days. Each month they put out a calendar of the flavors which we promptly acquire and adhere to our fridge. We’ve basically tried every flavor at this point! Because Freezer’s is located along the bike path, we’ll often ride with the kids up to have some ice cream (justifying that we’re simply working off the calories we ingest by biking instead of driving). Let me get to the point. Freezer’s is attached to a sub shop called Cousin’s, of which we are also fond. When Russ came to the meeting today, he brought cookies from Cousin’s Subs. As he offered us cookies, he mentioned that he owned Cousin’s. Of course, we had to inquire…did he own Freezer’s as well? YES! So, not only are we going to be neighbors with a highly respected member of the community, but we are going to live next door to the OWNER OF FREEZER'S! How cool is that? (So cool it's Freezing! Ha!)
Back to the lot…we’ve grouped our plans in phases and Phase One is the purchasing of the lot and the subsequent paying the lot off. Phase 2 includes saving enough for a hefty down payment on the construction and the actual building as well as the fence. Phase 3 is finishing the basement. Phase 4 is the in-ground pool. The phase definitions and time-frames are flexible, but we’ve definitely taken the first major step in building the Henderson Homestead.
