Purchase lot or Buy an existing home

Are there any existing homes that match your wish list within your budget? What is the price difference of building versus purchasing? What are your must haves??

Welcome to the beginning of our dream home search! Hope it can give you ideas and tips if you're looking for the same!

“Wishlist: Most rooms on one floor for when we are old, a wood burning fireplace, wood accents, great bathrooms, open floor plan with kitchen & living room, incredible view of the lake, and easy access to the lake via a cart path or a few steps.”

Existing Homes:

We viewed approx 8 homes that were for sale on the lake. A Modern home with great wood accents, almost pulled us in. Its drawbacks consisted of cheap vinyl flooring (not the nice vinyl planks - the roll-on whole room sheet), no fire place, a very steep stairway to the water with various obstructions for a cart path, and it still needed a dock to be built (high dollar add-on). A second home had the interior we loved, but again, no dock built and they were asking over $200 a square foot. For that same price or less we built the dream home!

Lot:

We looked at several lots. One was 1 acre with a pre-existing double boat dock already built. In the beginning this was our choice. However, when we started looking at where we would put the house in correlation to the lake & dock, we would have been staring straight at the boat house in our main view. We decided upon a lot that was a peninsula. You shared the peninsula with one other home, so you had a long pie shaped lot with approx 130' of lakefront and a cove! The good news is the rest of the cove was all trees. The opposite side of the cove was owned by one owner with a house at the tip. Someone owns the back of the cove, but has never shown an interest in building there. At the time we bought our 0.67 acre, the housing market was still down. We paid a mere $22,500 for our slice of heaven on earth! TIP: view w/ placement of house & boat dock & how much waterfront

Planning the build:

Once we purchased the lot, I began looking at what type of house we would want. We knew Modern, and I had an idea already in my mind. Just playing around, I found an app (HOUSE DESIGN) on my ipad that allowed you to do floor plans. I quickly started playing with it. I also searched modern homes on pinterest and houzz. I made a board on pinterest and started saving pictures of the style I loved. I found one house that the exterior was my dream on many fronts (https://www.linwoodhomes.com/house-plans/plans/salish/). I knew I would have to adapt the interior plans to our square footage and lot. Our POA rules stated the home had to be 30' away from the water line, and 10' away from neighboring property lines. With the shape of our lot, that really dictated where you would place the home. After getting a rough draft on the "house design" app, and making some story boards in power point with images of the house above, and a few others, I met with the builder. He wasn't in love with our modern design, I think it was a stretch for him. He did give a suggestion per the lot, to make the house skinny at the front and get gradually wider in the back. He also informed us the lot would have to be cleared before he would put us in his planning. He did not do this portion, so the hunt began for someone to clear the lot.

Clearing the lot:

Now, I don't think I've shared where this lake is. We have a home in Memphis TN, and Grand Valley Lake is 65 miles from that home, in very RURAL TN. The closest Walmart is 17min. away. The worst thing about the lake house, is finding workers to do anything. We paid a friend from Church ($1000) to come in and clean up the lot (weeds, mow, take down tiny trees). I think this helped when we had clearing contractors come give estimates as it looked clean and not so daunting. I drew a 45 min radius around the property and started calling land clearing companies. After several weeks and multiple estimates we found someone out of Jackson, TN for $6000. A local guy wanted $20000 to do the work. Samuel & Sons is whom we chose (see contact info below). They had the right equipment to do it at a much lower price/faster pace. That is part of the problem in the much more rural area, they may not have the right tools, so you are paying much more for a more manual labor job. In all we took down over 100 trees. We marked them by size. 44 were substantial to moderate to large trunks, while 60 were quite thin and much easier to remove. Something that helped the price, our lake has a dumping ground for wood/brush where they could take the downed trees. The POA manages this dump and burns off the items. We also gave the company permission to take the larger trees for their own profit. They could take them to different logging companies for a profit. Again, they had the correct equipment to make this a part of their business model. Don't worry, I have already planted 10 flowering trees to start adding back to the lot! I'll share that later in the landscape design story!

Dollars spent thus far:

$22,500 lot

$1,000 cleaning of lot

$6,000 clearing of lot

Samuel & Sons:

731-209-0366

michael@samuelandsonsconstruction.com

Enjoy the pictures of phase 1!!