We signed the contract and put down some goodwill money this morning... so just waiting for the bank to schedule the closing. After looking at about 20 pieces of land and countless other communities, we are even more confident about this lot. We also found a builder that we absolutely love and should be able to build a sick house for us. I say should b/c we won't be starting until late next year, so they won't commit just yet since it's so far out (which we understand), but I know they like us and they were excited about our plan and our lot... so I'm sure we'll be good to go. Either way, we're very excited as well.

Anyway, below are some quick shots of the land. I snuck these in a thread a few months ago, so you may have already seen them. It's still in the same town we live in now... just about 4.7 miles from where we live now. The lot is 1.75 acres....

 

congrats JB

start buying bug zappers now

 

^ hehe. Actually, we've lived on water before. Surprisingly, not as much as a problem as you would think. We also have already met and made friends with our neighbors, so we've been to their house many times this summer for BBQ's, dinners, etc.... and no problems. Hopefully it stays that way

 

congrats

 

mmmm red soil

 

You're buying ANOTHER house?! Why are you moving? Congrats anyways!

 

yeah... gotta love the red clay of the south

 

yeah, we're moving again. Won't be for a little while. We're not expecting to break ground until late next year, so we will not be moving until late 2009 at the earliest. We just bought the land for now and we'll probably put our current house on the market next spring.

We're moving b/c we need a basement. With the businesses we need a space where we can build out a specialized space to make things easier for us. We will also need the room for storage of some of our items which we cannot fit in our stores and are already taking up our third garage bay in our current home.

 

Damn. I want a third garage bay!

I just may be able to talk the wife into a riding lawnmower in the next couple of months!

 

Congrats! Though I'd never move that much. Your current house is WAY nice too. You can't just add on to it?

 

interesting. I'm surprised they can build a basment
1) with red clay
2) close to the water

 

Congrats, JB...!

 

Not really... and it's not worth it. With what we should make on this house and about 18 months or so of saving, our mortgage in the new place will be the same, possibly less then we have now. Plus, we'll be building a custom home this time around instead of using a production home builder, so it should blow our current house out of the water in just about every regard. Of course we'll have to do a pool and landscaping again starting from scratch... but this should be it for a while (hopefully a long while)... so we'll have time for that down the road



Yeah, no problem with the clay. There are tons of basement homes around the Charlotte area (and the entire Southeast for that matter)... no biggie. Not sure what's so surprising about a basement home on/near water. Most water lots slope toward the water anyway, so they're perfect for basements. If ours were on a crawl, it would be about an 8 foot crawl in the back anyway... so to dig it out a few more feet to make it a basement costs very little. There are also tons of basement homes on the large lakes in the area (Lake Norman and Lake Wylie)...so again...no biggie. And the house will be nowhere near the water. Just a quick estimate I would guess the back of our deck will be about 150'-175' or so from the water's edge....possibly more.... so we will have plenty of rear yard.




Thanks

 

Be sure to post pics, or we'll start calling you bustedbean!

 

*>red clay

 

Congrats

 

^ Thanks



hehe. Well, I've never lied about anything before, so why would I start now? Plus, pics are already posted . We keep good records of our ventures

 

Congrats !!

Those pics of red clay always freak me out... Living in the Northeast all my life I when I think dirt I think brown...

 

^ I hear you. You should have seen our faces when we first started looking down here. We couldn't fathom the red clay.

Honestly it took us about 6-8 months to get used to it. Now when we go back to NY to visit we think brown dirt is weird

 

Congrats!!!

 

congrats....after seeing how nice your current home is, I'm sure the next one is going to be beautiful!!!

 

^ Thanks all

 

Welcome to my life in Central Jersey! North Jersey where I grew up dirt was dirt - nice and brown - would even wash out of your clothes. This red clay is the worst - stains your clothes, if you are foolish enough to leave shoes on in your house - carpet would be stained too. Evil stuff. Had some landscaping work done recently and had the guy bring in some real topsoil - it was wild to see the color difference! I had forgotten what real dirt looked like.

 

looks like business is doing well.. congrats JB...

 

Sweet dude. Congrats.

 

Thanks Business is going very well, but actually, I haven't taken one dime from the store yet. My wife did get a promotion this past spring though which has helped a bit



Thanks! BTW, is that your son in your avatar? He got so damn big!