It was mid July and the girls and I were hanging out in Salt Lake with my mom when I told her about our plans to move into the Holladay/Millcreek area the following spring. Her eyes lit up and her voice suddenly got higher when she said, “Let’s go drive around some neighborhoods and look at houses!”
I think I giggled and rolled my eyes simultaneously. Her excitement was contagious though, and I couldn’t say no.
I told her how it would be a dream of mine to end up in the same neighborhood we moved from after she remarried. I have always loved that little neighborhood, and I loved it even more after I found out the elementary school had a French Dual Immersion program, but I didn’t see how we were going to find a house in that area within our suspected price range. She insisted that we just go drive around and check the neighborhood out.
So we did.
We drove past our old house—the house I grew up in—past the elementary school I went to, the church we were a part of, the street where we’d park and enjoy the view of the whole Salt Lake Valley. Past the tree stump my mom’s car slid into one wintry day. Memories, so many memories.
We drove until we saw a house with a “For Sale” sign in front. My mom instantly said “This is what you need, an old grandma house in need of some TLC.” As I looked at what looked like a house—I wasn’t sure because all you could see behind the trees and grape vines was a garage door—I just shook my head. No, definitely no.
“Call the number and see how much it’s listed for, “ my mom prompted.
I did so and almost choked when I heard how much it was going for. That much for that house? There’s no way.
We drove away and my idea of living in that neighborhood slowly started to feel like a dream and less like something that could actually happen. If that house was listed for what it was, then there’s no way we could get something that was decent and livable.
When we got home I decided to look at the house listing online to see if there were any pictures of the inside. Low and behold, there were, and it actually didn’t look that bad in there. It wasn’t beautiful and new like our current home, but it was kind of charming and just in need of a little help. I reminded myself why I wanted to live in Holladay, and why living in that neighborhood would be such a blessing for us.
I reminded myself that when we bought our first home, location didn’t matter to me. I just wanted it to be shiny and new. I didn’t want to inherit another person’s years of neglect to their home. I didn’t want to live in something that wasn’t clean and pretty.
So we settled. We settled for a place we didn’t know if we even liked. Building a brand new home—affordably—was honestly the only reason we moved to Tooele. I know now, that’s just not a good enough reason for me to live somewhere.
Driving around with my mom and “window shopping” for houses was right around the time that I got that impression to contact Carrie and see what she thought about our house. That’s when things starting falling into place.
When we started getting into the process of all the selling contracts for our home, I really didn’t think that house I saw with my mom in my dream neighborhood, was going to be available. I thought for sure it was under contract, or very close to it. Or that at any time it would be gone.
But to my surprise when we started house hunting for real, it was still there.
It was one of the first places we looked at, and when we walked through it for the first time, Mike and I were just speechless. And not because we knew it was the place for us, but because of the amount of work it really did need. The pictures online were able to hide a lot of the details. There were bars on the windows, it had a weird smell, wallpaper everywhere that had already begun peeling off the walls, there were 3 locks on every door, weird flooring, the yard was a mess, and oh my goodness, the amount of spider webs I saw….
My realtor asked what we thought and we just didn’t know. It was hard to imagine us living there.
So we kept looking. We looked at more places in Holladay/Millcreek, we even checked out condos and townhomes—our attempt to find something newer and less in need of work in compensation for less space. We even ventured into different cities thinking we could get something better, but every time we looked at something else I just kept comparing it to this house in Holladay that I didn’t even like!
What was up with that?!
So we thought maybe we just needed to see it again. This time we went I Facetimed my mom while we walked through it and she just had the most upbeat, positive attitude. “Yeah, but that can be fixed,” she kept saying. “Think about where you’ll be living! Where your kids will go to school.” Ugh she had a very good point.
Still, Mike and I were thinking, “No, we can’t handle that.”
So we kept looking. Time was of the essence though, we had a 45-day schedule to close, and only a few days to find something and get it under contract if we wanted everything to line up well.
We looked at place after place, found multiple ones we liked, and a few we wanted to put offers on. One house that I absolutely loved went under contract the day we looked at it, and I knew that if we wanted the house in Holladay we better decide quickly.
We reminded ourselves how much we were paying attention to the location this time around, and this house was in our perfect location. The city we wanted, within walking distance from good schools, parks, in a place that would appreciate well, and most importantly, it was close to Mike’s work—cutting his commute to 15 minutes! The more we thought about it the more we thought we couldn’t pass it up.
We went to look at the house one more time and we decided that was it. We put an offer in the following morning, and were surprised to hear that the house had been on the market for six months, with two cash offers that were just sitting there—for who knows how long—waiting for the seller to accept. She hadn’t taken them yet and was just waiting for something better to come along—us.
We offered under asking price, hoping they would accept, they didn’t but they did counter-offer. I wrote a letter to the buyer hoping that would help sway them with our own counter-offer, and it did. A few days later, we were under contract and set to close within the time frame we needed to close in.
Timing is a funny thing. I can’t tell you how many times I would drive home to Tooele, wishing I didn’t have to leave Salt Lake. Or I’d be driving around Holladay after visiting my dad and just think to myself “I wish I lived here.” I know now that when you want something bad enough–if something is really important to you–God/the universe (whatever you prefer to call it) will give it to you. You just have to be open to hearing inspiration–that sweet small voice that will lead and guide you if you listen. It’s that voice that told me “You should talk to Carrie about buying the house.” If I hadn’t been open to hearing that, or if I had dismissed it as a crazy thought that couldn’t go anywhere, we wouldn’t have sold our house when we did. We wouldn’t have moved. But, I listened. This house in Holladay was meant to be ours.
We will look back at our time in our little small town fondly. I miss the smallness of it sometimes. The grocery store was 2 minutes away. We knew almost every single person in our neighborhood. We had beautiful sunsets from our home. We had so many friends and cute neighbhorhood kids for our kids to play with. And I miss our house.
But we are here in Holladay now, and we are so happy and blessed to be here. The neighborhood is what we hoped it would be—diverse and friendly. There are kids all over the place (which was a concern of ours). We love having Mike so close to work. We love being able to walk to school. We are part of an awesome church community and love being 5-minutes away from my dad, and just 20-minutes away from other family members–I think that’s my favorite thing about moving.
Living in an older home has already come with its fair share of complications. It certainly isn’t as easy to settle into as a brand new home is—one that smells pretty, doesn’t have wallpaper falling off the walls, has few spiders to kill, and every appliance and HVAC unit works perfectly. I’ve learned something though—when buying a home location really does matter. Not just because of home/land appreciation, but because when you love where you live, what you live in really won’t matter as much.
Lesson learned–move to a small town if you want small town life and not just because you want a brand new home.
PLUS–when I’m surrounded by these 3 humans I love so much, there is really nothing to complain about. A house is a house, but what makes it a home are the people that settle in and make it their own. And that’s exactly what we plan to do with this tiny, little house–make it our home.
