I'm really keeping an open mind about this whole move and am excited about our next journey, but I can't say the process isn't stressful. I'm a very organized life-planned-out kind of person. Not knowing were we will be in 5 weeks is challenging for me. We have looked at 10 rental homes in the Ames, Nevada and Huxley areas. We have one we really like and definitely want to rent. Problem is, we don't want to sign a lease until we are more sure that our house sale is going to go through....which honestly, could be the day we close, leaving us no home to go to.
It's so tough. If it were just James and I, we wouldn't have an ounce of concern. Having children though, presents so many more challenges and reasons why I'd love to be able to move straight into a rental home from our house. We have passed the inspection hurdle, and have been told all is well for the buyer's house sale to close. The only thing we are waiting on now is the appraisal on our house...which has yet to be scheduled, unfortunately. We are 5 weeks out from closing and I know appraisals can take 2 weeks to be completed. I'm going to guess the earliest the actual appraisal at our house will occur is late next week....and then up to 2 weeks to hear back on the results....leaving us just 2 weeks left to find a rental and sign a lease. That doesn't sound stressful at all does it?? We have a couple of relatives who will welcome us into their homes if we need it, but that will mean moving all of our stuff into a storage unit, just to turn around and pull it back out to move into a rental. But, it is what it is.
I've heard that moving is expensive....but holy crap is it truly expensive!! First, if you use a realtor you have to pay them a large percentage of the sale and you may have to pay closing costs too. Then you have the expensive of movers, or a U-Haul if you don't have your own trailer or several trucks to load your things into (we don't). And in our case, we could have this expense twice if we have to move to a storage unit first. And then wait...a third time too when we move into our next permanent home. Ugh. And then the storage unit expense too. We will likely have to get one regardless of where we rent, because we are going from a 4500 sq ft house to around 1000 sq ft rental. We have 5 bedrooms furnished right now, and will only have 2-3 bedrooms in our rental. We've been liquidating lots of furniture from our house (the wanna-be minimalist in me gets a little giddy seeing things leave my house). James has tons of things in his garage too that will probably occupy the most space in the storage unit.
And then, don't even get me started on the cost to rent a house in the Ames area. Okay, I'll start. I swear the richest people in town must be landlords! 1,500 sq ft houses renting for $1,800/month. It's nuts. The place we like and are planning to rent if all goes through is going up in rent by $350 in August!!! I just cannot believe how much they can charge...and that people are paying these prices. I will, only because I have kids and want a decent house for them. We have had 2 Ames realtors tell us how much smarter it would be to buy an inexpensive house and then turn around and sell it when we finish building our new place. I checked mortgage prices on a $90,000 house I like....$430! It almost seems like a no-brainer, but we are truly hoping to only have to rent for a year and it just seems crazy to have ourselves tied up in a house we don't even want. James has no desire to be a landlord, or we could probably rent it out for double the mortgage amount. And then to make matters worse, Ames has a August-July lease period (to cater to students), so finding a place available this spring is tough.
Anyway, I know it will all work out in the end. We will make the best of whatever options we have. Luckily it will be warmer out and being in a larger town gives us so many more options of things to keep us busy this spring/summer/fall. I was able to get Rylee enrolled in preschool in the fall in Ames, so as long as we live within 20 minutes of the preschool, we will make everything else work. It's really been a great time to move so that she can start school at the same time as the other kids. Getting to see James before 6:30 in the evening will be a huge bonus too!! There really are so many positives to this move, it's just clearing the hurdles to get there that's a bit challenging at the moment. We are mentally prepared to work together to get over them the best we can.
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