T-Minus 238 Days: Bonaire by Taylor Morrison

 We have extensively searched new builders in the Orlando area. One of the new build house designs we found that we like is the Bonaire by builder Taylor Morrison. 

Taylor Morrison is building communities all throughout the west side of the greater Orlando area. We found this house in the Lakeside community in Apopka. 

There are several things that are essential to our search. We want, what we are calling, "The Cluster". We want a kitchen that is open to a breakfast nook and living room. We want the breakfast nook and living room to look out onto the pool. The first floor layout includes The Cluster.

I prefer a two story house that has the master bedroom and an office on the first floor. The Bonaire provides that. I also want a Lanai that stretches across the back of the house, which is available with this design. Many models have the walk-in closets on the other side of the bathroom - I like how the Bonaire has the closet between the master bedroom and bathroom. 

What don't I like about the first floor? Anyone from the North East is likely confused by the position of the garage. Building lots in Florida are small, so, they typically build the houses sideways (compared to a house in the North East). What we would consider to be the side of the house is actually the front of the house in Florida. That isn't always true with every home design, but it is true for most. While a garage would normally be seen on the side of the house, it is very common to see the garage sitting in the front yard. Often the garage is built into the house (with the second floor built over the top). Therefore, the position of the garage in this home design is not a concern.

What is a concern is the size of the rooms. The room sizes are... OK. But not desirable. The master bedroom is much smaller than our New York home. And the dinning room would not fit our dinning room set. In fact, every room on the first floor is smaller than the rooms in our New York house.

The next thing we want is a separate area for our adult children. We are bringing our sons with us and want them to each have their own bathroom, for them to share a living room space, and to have their area away from our area. The Bonaire has this area on the second floor.

There are several things we don't like about the upstairs. First, the "Open To Below" area is a cute architecture feature, but, it is wasted space. While I like it, we need square footage and we are disappointed that there isn't an option to turn that space into another room. Next, the bedrooms on the right side are very small compared to what we want. Those bedrooms are smaller than our smallest bedroom in the New York house. In fact, the largest bedroom (Bedroom 2) is just slightly larger than our smallest New York bedroom. The size of the bedrooms is a disappointment.

In summary, we like the layout of the house but find the rooms in the house to all be too small. 

T-Minus 239 Days: A Trip To Florida

 A Trip To Florida Video

T-Minus 245 Days: Florida Vision Board

 I was watching a Florida with Five episode and they mentioned having a vision board for their Florida move. I had never heard about vision boards before, so, I did a little research.

Vision Board Video

It makes sense. We all hang pictures in our house or put on our desk at work to remind ourselves of the things that are important.

Before cancer I was running 5 miles per day. After cancer, I put on a lot of weight. I hung this Run Disney picture in my office to remind myself of a goal I have to do a Run Disney Marathon someday. 

According to my research, this didn't work for several reasons. First, you are supposed to put the vision board someplace where you will see it every day. Second, you are supposed to look at it every day. Third, when you look at it, you are supposed to imagine that you have already achieved it (it is part of programming your mind to obtain what you want). Fourth, and optionally, you should use words or sentences that describe the feelings you get or will have from that picture.

I did none of that so the picture wasn't very motivating.

Now that I have done some research into Vision Boards, I understand them better. And I am thinking about what I might put on a vision board if I were to create one. These are some of my ideas (In no particular order):

We will live in Central Florida and vacation at the beaches

Get back into my pre-cancer shape

Certifications and/or degrees that advance my career and keep me employed

We will find a good church in Florida that we can stay connected to

Regular date nights in Disney Springs. If we just want to pop over for dinner, we can.

Season pass to Disney World. We can come and go whenever we want

Eating healthy

My Florida Car

I won't care about anything reported in the news and I won't care about politics. I want the world to just leave me alone.

Palm trees. Lots and lots of palm trees.

Participate in Disney Run Marathons 

A clutter free house

Watch TV while floating in the pool.

Relax and watch football

My summer kitchen so I can cook outdoors poolside.

Now all I have to do is print these pictures out, put them on a board, hang the board somewhere, and look at it every day.

T-Minus 247 Days: Renting a Florida House

 There is the real possibility that we might have to rent a house when we get to Florida. The possibility that our house will sell in such a way that some house in Florida is ready for us to immediatly move into is very unlikely. We may be able to use a short-term rental from HomeAway.com or, need something a bit longer term from Appartments.com . I decided to check the availability of longer term rentals from Apartments.com to understand the options and inventory.

It is important to note that apartments in the Orlando area are often advertised and rented during the same day. They rarely sit open for very long. Therefore, you are likely to find vastly different results when searching one day to the next. It also means that once you find something you like, you need to move very fast. Most of the houses are listed by how many hours they have been on the site, not how many days.

Our search: we need a four+ bedroom pool house that is dog friendly. On this day, there are only 17 available rentals, a third of which are over priced. 

Eighty percent of the houses are not furnished, which means we'll probably have to move our furniture into the house temporarily. Moving washers, dryers, couches, and everything else into a house is a lot of work and a huge pain. Alternatively, if the house was furnished then we have to pay PODS to store our stuff for a longer period of time, which can get expensive. We could unload everything into the garage only to re-pack it all back up later on... but what a huge pain that would be!

Bottom line: I hope we don't have to do a rental. But if we do, there are not a lot of options and we would have to move fast to secure something if needed.

T-Minus 250 Days: Constructing a pool

 It is likely we will need to add a pool to our Florida house because most houses don't come with one. Adding an enclosed pool can cost $50-60K! I never understood all the work that goes into making a pool until I started watching time lapse of pool construction. There is a ton of work that goes into these!

Pool Video 1

Pool Video 2

T-Minus 253 Days: Moving Budget

Moving Budget Video (6 min)

Missing from the video:

Home Inspector $800

Mold Inspection $500

Property Cost (New Builds) $2-$20K

Design Center Cost (New Builds) 7% to 15% of the cost of the house

T-Minus 256 Days: Decision Tree

One of the goals of this blog is to share our journey of moving to Florida to help others who might choose a large move. I have read many blogs and watched many VLOGs of other families moving to Florida, and this is my way to give back to the community and help others who might have a large move in their future.

 Our options for moving to Florida are becoming very complicated due to the Pandemic. We planned to visit Florida in August 2020, but that was canceled due to COVID restrictions: we would have needed to quarantine for two weeks once we arrived in Florida, and then quarantine for another two weeks once we returned to New York.

We reschedule the trip for November. The quarantine in Florida has now been lifted, but when we return to New York we would still have to be quarantined for two weeks. That is two weeks when my wife can't go to work, earn a pay check, and have her benefits (we would have to pay for the Health Insurance out of our pocket). If we violate the quarantine we could be fined up to $10,000.

If we want to build a house and have it ready for our June/July move, we need to commit 8 months in advance... which is November. In other words, we have to fly to Florida in a couple of weeks and sign papers to have someone build us a house. I don't think we can fly to Florida. And I'm not going to pick a builder sight unseen. 

Our real estate agent had told us we need to sign 8 months in advance because the normal 6 month window has slid to 8 months due to all the high demand. But now I am hearing from builders and from people who are having houses built that there is a shortage of building supplies. It can take 4 months to get a refrigerator, for example. Another person told me the stores are completely sold out of plywood. Another person who is building apartment complexes told me they have a work stoppage because they can't get materials. This makes be believe that even 8 months for a new build may be unrealistic.

Due to the shortage in building supplies, new home construction prices are rising (supply and demand). Almost overnight, houses rose $10K. Because of the challenges with new home construction, demand for existing houses is very high (it was high in Florida before, now it is crazy). Houses sit on the market for a few days and get a bidding war above the asking price. It is a great time to be selling a house... not a great time to be buying.

Due to the challenges COVID has placed on our move, I have assembled the following decision tree to try to make sense of it all.