Why We Sold Our Dream Home & The Nightmare of Building a New One During a Pandemic (with two babies!)

WHEW! Where do I even start?! First, we are thankful to FINALLY be home sweet home. I say finally because it took a YEAR to complete the process from start to finish. We literally put blood — well, only because of nosebleeds. I get them in TX winters when it’s nice and cold outside and everyone bumps the thermostats up to 90 degrees..Anyway, we shed blood, sweat, and tears as one thing after another was thrown our way during a really discouraging and stressful process. On top of it all, we had to navigate trying to focus during appointments and meetings with one or both of our little cubs in tow, which was challenging as well. (If you’re about to be in the same boat, check out my post on A Few Tips for Bringing Babies Along for Business).

This process was crazy, but if we can do it anyone can do it, and after my self-therapy session of getting this nightmare all typed out I actually feel better about the whole fiasco. Shall we begin? 🙃

December 2020: The Search Begins

My husband and I built our 1st home together in 2015, a few months before we got married and 3 years before we started having kids. We absolutely loved it. To me, it was a dream home and I saw it as a forever home as well — then we had babies and where I saw us living instantly became about more than just a pretty house. I wanted to live in a neighborhood that had lots of other kids for mine to spend afternoons playing with. I wanted parks we could walk to and other outdoor spaces for my kids to enjoy. I wanted a fun, family community and that’s not what we had. No one really spoke to one another, there weren’t many young families, and we didn’t even have a park. It was a gorgeous, gated little subdivision with a home I will always be enamored with, but it didn’t provide the lifestyle I wanted for my family. So we decided we would sell our home and move to a neighborhood 8 minutes up the same road, that had everything I was looking for and more — hundreds of other families raising children, multiple playgrounds, parks and trails, dog parks, swimming pools, a beautiful nature preserve, all in one neighborhood, and in a suburb that’s always buzzing with fun family activities. It was a much more expensive neighborhood, so we knew we’d probably have to sacrifice some things we liked about our 1st home, but for now, our little cubs come first and I knew this new neighborhood would be an amazing place to raise them. Besides, the investment of building in this neighborhood would generate a much larger return than our old house could – we already gained the same amount of equity in this house in the months it was being built that it took us 5 YEARS to gain in our old home – crazy!) So, we already had some really cool ideas about how after raising our babies here we could use those returns to pull out all the stops and make our next chapters just about what my husband and I wanted – this was an amazing opportunity!

The new neighborhood offered over a dozen builders and what felt like at least a hundred different floor plans. I spent the month of December scrolling through every one of them and dragging my husband to tour models of my favorites. During this process we were able to leave our little cubs with their grandparents, my husband’s parents, who still lived in Houston at the time. (Oh the joys of leaving the house with just the two of us..seems like such a distant memory!) They’re like parents to me and there’s no one I feel more comfortable leaving my babies with than them. We didn’t have or want babysitters, just Nana and Papa. ❤️

JANUARY 2021: Congrats to Us, We Signed A Contract!

After hours and weeks of searching through endless options, by the end of January we had decided to go with a plan by M/I Homes. By this time, my in-laws had moved alll the way up to Iowa for a new job opportunity and with no babysitters we were on our own with no one to watch our kids for the 1st time. (A year later, I’m still depressed about not seeing my in-laws all the time and I’d say we are still adjusting to not having babysitters.) So the day we signed our contract was pretty stressful. We had a 2 year old and a 6 month old, both of whom needed diaper changes, snacks and meals throughout the day, and the youngest of which was still nursing at least 5 times a day. We drug them around the city looking at models from around 10am-3pm and by the time we had finished the lengthy contract-signing process it was well after dark. I just wanted to get it over with so we could get home and get our babes some dinner before they started getting irritable.

FEBRUARY 2021: Congrats to Us, We Signed ANOTHER Contract!

Not even 24 hours after signing with M/I Homes I regretted it. At this point in time, the streets were literally flooded with home buyers going from model to model, just minutes away from snatching up the lot you might have been eyeing so I felt extremely pressured to hurry up and pick a house and lot before someone else took them first. I was also distracted by caring for our babies or trying to mitigate their tantrums during this process, so I wasn’t thinking as clearly as I would had I been without distractions. That pressure and lack of focus led me to settle for a home I wasn’t truly happy with, and after a night of NOT sleeping on it, but staying up thinking about how I had made a mistake, I told my husband this wasn’t our home and we needed to cancel the contract. A week later we did just that, then crossed the street of the cul-de-sac of model homes and signed a new contract with Coventry Homes. Just like that.

Was I worried about what my husband, our realtor, AND original builder might say if I went back to them and said I had changed my mind? Of course I was. I thought “What will they all think after all the time we spent on this? Who cancels a contract?” Me. You. Anyone can, because this is a major (and expensive) decision you’re making for your family. Who cares what anyone thinks. Honestly, after the nightmare we experienced with Coventry, at the moment I wrote this I even wished we would have canceled with them and gone with the other builder that was on my list. But again, I was distracted and rushed and didn’t feel like I had enough time to really think through our endless options. So, if you find yourself in this position and 1) you’re able to get all or most of your earnest money back, and 2) there are still other options available to you then don’t be afraid to CANCEL THAT CONTRACT! It may seem scary, but imagine how much scarier it would be to officially close on a house, only to realize you’re not actually happy with it. It’s a lot harder to rectify the situation at that point, and you will never regret making a decision that may have been inconvenient at a time, but beneficial for years to come.

So, on Valentine’s Day weekend we embarked on the rest of our homebuilding journey with Coventry Homes.

MARCH 2021: Design Time 😍

Again, home lots were flying off the maps and everyone’s schedules were packed, so we had to wait a month after signing our contract before we could get into the design studio. This was one of my favorite parts about the building process. When we built our 1st home we didn’t have the option to go to a design studio so I thought this was really exciting. I loved being able to pick out the beautiful little (and big!) details of our home and this time we went a little more on the luxury side as opposed to our more traditional 1st home – the diva in me loves that! Fortunately, the appointment was during preschool hours so we just had 1 little cub to look after. Thankfully, he was such a well-behaved little gentleman that we were able to focus on our selections and I have absolutely no regrets about anything we chose.

It was even more important that we were able to focus that day because we noticed a mistake the builder made when drafting our contract. One of the reasons we went with Coventry Homes as opposed to another builder I was really close to selecting was because Coventry offered a 3 car garage and a media room. Before we even visited the model I specifically spoke with our sales agent about the media room and how it was a must. Our realtor was aware of this as well, and we all talked about it the day we showed up to sign the contract. Somehow, the media room was not added to our contract and none of us noticed until our design appointment…the resolution? WE had to pay COVENTRY to edit our contract after THEY failed to add it, despite all of the evidence showing we had asked for it. Strike 1. While I didn’t think it was fair we should have to pay for their mistake, I was just so happy we had cancelled the contract on a home we would have been unhappy with and that we caught this now instead of when our home was already being built. So we shrugged it off, paid the fee, had our media room added, and kept it moving.

APRIL 2021 – JUNE 2021: Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

You read that correctly. For 3 months, we drove past our lot and found the same trash-filled mud pit we started out with. Meanwhile, we were told that if we didn’t sell the home we were living in within something ridiculous like 60 days they would cancel our contract. By this time, builder were raising house prices by what seemed like thousands of dollars an hour, so if we cancelled our contract the only other builder I would have chosen was already much more expensive than when we started the process. There was no backing out anymore, and we really wanted this neighborhood for our family, so it was this or nothing. We quickly staged and listed our beautiful home, driving around Houston with two cubs weekend after weekend during showings and were under contract with a buyer by the end of May. We sold it (bittersweet moment!), packed the whole house into boxes, and shoved all of the boxes plus our family into a tiny apartment until our new home was ready. You can imagine our surprise when checking on our lot over the next 90 days and being greeted with this same view each time:

I mean, really? I’m pretty sure if you look hard enough you can find both Waldo and his car radiator in there. Now, we were smack dab in the middle of this dang pandemic so we were fully aware that like most home buyers at that time we could expect some delays due to supply and workforce shortages beyond our builder’s control. But if they knew that as well, why were we rushed and threatened to do everything they asked us to do within a short period of time, only to watch them ignore our lot for 3 months with no explanation of why we had sold our home and written them multiple sizable checks at this point but with no results.

Frustrating was an understatement. STRIKE 2.

JULY 2021: I’ve Never Been More Excited To See Concrete

At the very end of July construction had finally begun and our mud pit was transformed into a foundation of concrete slab. After an entire quarter with no progress, we quickly set our anger aside and looked forward to more progress.

AUGUST 2021: We’ve Been Framed

Well, our house anyway. By the end of August we had seen the most progress in the 6 months since we signed the contract…meanwhile, 6 months into the 1st house we built together we had already moved in. I was definitely missing it already!

SEPTEMBER 2021 – OCTOBER 2021: “Peace be to you, peace to your house, and peace to all that you have”

Throughout September, they continued to work on the extremely important but boring (😂) “guts” of the house. My absolute favorite part about this month and about the entire building experience was that we took this time to put our stamp on the foundation of our home. On our 7th wedding anniversary, we took the babies to the house and let them add their scribbles while we added some very beautiful, motivational, and hopeful scriptures into each room, including a special scripture for each of our babies!

We put Isaiah 40:30-31 in Isaiah’s room and Jeremiah 29:11 in Alianna’s room. 🥰 We added I Corinthians 13:4-8 to our bedroom. This will always be so special to us!

NOVEMBER 2021: To The Windoooooow, To Da WALLLL!

The millennial in me had to say it. This month came with some excitement! Our structure started to look more like an actual home, with windows, walls (🎶💃🏾🙌🏾), doors, and cabinets starting to make their way in. On top of that, we were finally given an estimated closing date range of mid-December so we would be able to spend Christmas in our new home!

Also, we found out we were pregnant with our 3rd little cub…🥰.

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DECEMBER 2021: Soo You WON’T Be Moving In This Month After all…MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I think that title says it all. Something tells me that maaaaybe if our house hadn’t sat there for 3 months we would have been able to move in by Christmas? But by December it was clear that they had far too much work to complete to make a Christmas (or even December) move-in possible. Without hesitation, we packed the car and the cubs up, left town, and gladly accepted an invitation to spend the majority of the month enjoying quality time with Nana and Papa in Iowa. It was a really meaningful time for our family and we were so disappointed with the home delay that we honestly tried to just ignore that process during this time. We had been through a lot at this point, and if we weren’t moving in for Christmas or even the New Year, I had gotten to a point where I just didn’t even care what progress was being made…like, call me when the house is ready. Until then, we have nothing to talk about.

In hindsight, I think the hormones and constant morning sickness raging throughout my body at this point probably had a lot to do with my negative mindset. I was mentally and physically just tired of everything, and my little family and I were ready to have a home again.

JANUARY 2022: “Hey, Just Calling to Let You Know That After A Year of Your Time and Money, We’re Going to Give Your House Away”

Once January hit it seemed like Coventry Homes was just ready to get rid of us. By this time the base price of our home was well over $100,000 more than when we signed our contract so after what felt like multiple attempts to frustrate us so much that we just walked away and they could instantly sell our home for much more, I guess they had given up and needed to just get this one off the books. All of a sudden, they went from working at a snail’s pace to putting all hands on deck to make sure we would close ASAP, by January 28th to be specific. We had never seen them work harder but we knew it wasn’t for our benefit, they hadn’t been concerned about that this entire time.

By Monday of the last week of January we were certain we wouldn’t be able to close that Friday the 28th. Too many things weren’t complete. I had also asked if they could push the closing date back just FOUR MEASLY DAYS, which give us a month without having to spend money on apartment rent or a mortgage. Between an overpriced apartment and having someone else take care of our dog this entire time, we were hemorrhaging money each month. But they ignored my request and rushed to finish up. Thursday the 27th rolled around and they confirmed we would be closing on Friday, despite some items not being complete. They basically told us that the house was complete enough for them to be free of any legal consequence so we were closing whether we liked it or not…cool, thanks.

The cherry on top? Thursday afternoon at 4pm, just 24 hours before we were scheduled to close on our home I get a call from our realtor, who was an absolute GOD SEND during all of this madness. (Reading to our babies while we signed paperwork, coming over at 9pm after their bedtime to help me stage our home because that was an easier time for me, getting on the phone to argue with builders on our behalf, you name it she did it with no hesitation and we are SO incredibly grateful for her.) She calls me at 4pm to tell me that Coventry Homes called her and threatened to “immediately give our home away” if they didn’t have some paperwork they needed by 5pm…their exact words.

After nearly a YEAR and several thousands of dollars into the process of us signing our contract with them, selling our home ASAP at their insistence, and shoving our family into an apartment for 6 months (which we were expected to vacate in the next 2 weeks because we had given our notice) they thought it would be appropriate to call us an hour before end of business day the day before closing date and threaten to take our family’s home away. By the way, all of our paperwork was signed, sealed, and ready to go, but our credit union wasn’t aware of this deadline that seemed to pop out of nowhere…they had it sent within 15 minutes, so there was never a reason to threaten a family to render them homeless within the next hour. How could they be so heartless?

I am still appalled and disgusted by this. We did everything we were supposed to do and our family sacrificed a lot during this time, including being without our family dog who wasn’t allowed to stay at the apartment with us. This was certainly strike 3 for me. I would never build with Coventry Homes again, nor would I ever recommend them to our family and friends. I wouldn’t want anyone I love going through this.

What I will say is that when I look back at these images, I’m going to choose to forget about the poor service we received. Instead, I’m going to smile at the changes you can see in our babies, and laugh about how you can also see the changes in the seasons based on our outfits. This road was long and not at all pretty, but it is now a part of our story. We worked and sacrificed for this house that is now our home! I am reminded that there is nothing we won’t do for our family, and together we will always persevere. ❤️

Building a Home of Your Own?

If you’re getting ready to embark on the home-building journey yourself, congratulations!! Now that my post has scared you, I want to say that not everyone’s experience is a nightmare. Our 1st was home-building process was an easy, amazing experience! But between the pandemic, panicking builders trying not to lose money left and right, and our neighborhood being a master-planned community with literally HUNDREDS of home buyers building at the same time, there just wasn’t enough supply and labor to quickly and easily meet so much demand in one neighborhood. So maybe that’s not the case for you, and your proces will goes much more smoothly, but if not, just know that you are not alone and hopefully you’ve learned something from our nightmare that will help you make a better decision than you may have made before. So many other home buyers have experienced the struggle of building during a pandemic (with kids too!) and they come out on the other side with a home they love. You will too.

I think it’s also important to remember that we all want a perfect, dream, forever home but most of the time there will ALWAYS be something you wish were different or better, etc etc about your home. Honestly, when I started this post and relived this whole process, including what I could have gotten with a different builder, I was feeling regret for not cancelling the 2nd contract (as crazy as that sounds). But going through this experience, writing this out, feeling regret, and realizing how ungrateful that is has taught me a lesson. There will always be things about our old home I will miss, and there will always be things about other homes that I can look at and say “oh it would be cool if ours had that” or “oh, maybe we should have gone with that builder instead”. But just like our 1st dream home eventually wasn’t enough because of the stage of life we entered, things will always change and we can always find things about our life that make it seem like it’s “not enough”. Where does it end? It ends when we practice more gratitude for what we do have than longing for what we don’t, and when it comes to where we live it is the PEOPLE in our home that make it important, not the elevation, the finishings, or whatever else could be different if only this or that.

It is clear to me now that I needed to re-learn that lesson. The rollercoaster of emotions and failures I’ve experienced on this journey have taught me not to put so much importance in tangible things that I become blind to the things that are truly important in life — things we’ve been blessed to receive during this journey like extra time with a family member we almost lost and a new life that I get to carry one last time to make our family complete. We are blessed. 🤎

The end of this journey left my growing family with a beautiful home in a beautiful neighborhood. Not only am I going to trust that God meant for us to stick with this contract and that He wanted us in this house, but I am going to step back and realize how fortunate we are to be here, happy, and healthy, with an amazing new chapter ahead of us. I am grateful.❤️

So, no matter what bumps you find along your home-buying journey, stay focused on what’s most important. If something doesn’t feel right, don’t be afraid to change your mind. If you get discouraged, don’t give up. Keep going and keep the end result in mind. If you’re going to have to work (and possibly sweat and bleed) for this, make sure that when it’s finally over you walk into your beautiful new house with no regrets, because you didn’t just build a house, you built a home for your family, and that is an amazing gift you’ve given them. If you know someone who’s going through this experience, be sure to give them a hug when you see them. If it’s you who’s embarking on this journey yourself, best of luck to you, and may you enjoy making lasting memories for years to come in your new home! 🥂

Follow my family on Instagram as we navigate the chaos of raising cubs @cubsandchaos. 🤎