Finding and Buying a Home in Utah

Keith’s daydream would be coming true! Eventually, we would be buying a home in Utah.

Our home would be in Utah

Ultimately we decided on Pleasant Grove…. about 1 mile from his beloved American Fork. I have to give him credit for his research, this really was a great area to live!

The search is on

We weren’t quite ready to actually purchase just yet since we wouldn’t be moving until August 2016.  The market in Utah moves crazy fast so it was a balancing act of finding a unit we wanted, but not purchasing too soon and it be sitting for months.

We got really serious about our budget for the new home.  We were prepared to buy a condo or townhome when the right unit became available.  Since the market was moving so fast we knew we’d have to jump on something if it met our requirements.

After our October visit, we created a “hot sheet” to give to our realtor, Scott.  We really were only interested in one community, Cambria.  We did have another community that we would consider.  While visiting the complexes, we took detailed notes about each building/unit.  We ranked unit numbers on the location, view, etc.

Scott was able to put this into his computer system and anytime a unit on our hot sheet came available, we would be notified. Units did become available, but none were quite what we were looking for.

How we found “the one”

Late one Wednesday evening in February I got online to check out properties.  I found one that seemed perfect and wasn’t sure why it wasn’t on our hot sheet.  After a little research, we learned that one of the streets in our favorite neighborhood was longer than we thought. This property was nearly perfect!

We emailed our realtor very late Wednesday night, put in an offer on Thursday, accepted the counteroffer Friday, and flew to Utah Saturday!!! Did you catch that? … in a matter of days, we bought ourselves a new home!

The trip to inspect it was quick, but we really wanted to see the location. It was so much fun to be back in Utah and see where we’d be living in a few months.

HUGE shoutout to Scott for all that he did to help this dream become a reality!  He went above and beyond time and time again to help us.

This would be our new home

We loved it and it was official… this would be our new home!  It needed some cosmetic work and changes we preferred. Now we started a new set of lists…new carpet, paint the trim, replace the sink and faucet, add a light in the bathroom, install ceiling fans, etc.

Within about 3 weeks the closing was complete and we now owned a townhome!  This was r-e-a-l-l-y happening!  Our plans really started to take off.  Keith spent a week in Utah in May 2016 getting the work done at the townhome so that it would be all ready to move in when we arrived in August.

Resigning from my job

I made it official that I’d be resigning from my job at the end of the school year.  It was at this time that we began to open up to others about our plans.  We had things in place and this would be happening in a few months so it wasn’t such a secret anymore.

It was quite surreal to be quitting my job after 14 years.  So much had changed since my first day of teaching; I had grown so much personally and professionally.  I met so many people from my work that influenced and changed my life over those years.  My school family is such a big part of my daily life and I’d be leaving that.  It was definitely a mix of emotions and not easy!

***I considered doing a whole post dedicated to resigning from my job. Finding the right words became very difficult. I do want my BCSC family to know that I purposely skimmed over this part because I couldn’t adequately express my gratitude for all of them. You all mean so much to me!***