T-Minus 179 Days: Good Progress

 Some great progress was made in several areas. First, we wired our deposit to KB Homes and signed the Intent To Purchase. We will be building the Plan 3016 at Lake Ridge in Minneola. Next step: by mid-January, we will select our lot and sign the building contract. 

In other news, my parents live in an in-law apartment attached to our New York home. We offered to take them to Florida with us, but they want to stay in New York. After many many months of searching, they found a place that meets their needs and agreed with them on an open apartment. 

We continue to purge and sell items on Facebook Marketplace. We have a gym in our house and I've sold some items from there. I organized some sports cards to sell, a guy agreed to buy them, and then he contacted me and said the cards are worth 5 times what I am selling them for and he wouldn't feel right buying them. He agreed to give me the names of a few people who would give me a fair price. And then he never provided those names. So... was he just trying to back out of the purchase? Or is he right? I don't know.

Moving to Florida is very expensive. I have a goal for how much I want to contribute toward that expense by selling our stuff. Here is the progress: we are 50% of the way there!

 As we close out 2020, we are happy to report this great progress!

T-Minus 182 Days: Back To Purging

 We are back to purging!

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T-Minus 184 Days: The New York Window

 I have a 32" TV in my office that I call my Florida Window. It loops video of beaches and Florida neighborhoods. Some of the video is live webcams and some is video that I have taken from our many trips in Florida. Anytime during the day I can gaze out my Florida Window and imagine I am in the warm sunshine state.

I imagine that once I have moved to Florida, I am going to want a New York window to remind me about the many years spent there. So, I created the New York window, a snowy scene looking out at the farm field across the street from my house. 

If you have already left New York? Perhaps this window will help bring back some memories for you.

T-Minus: 187 Days: Crazy Florida Real Estate Market

 1000 people per day are moving to Florida and they need a place to live as millions of people are leaving states like New York. In fact, a recent study suggested more than one third of all NYC residents are considering leaving. Helping to drive this is the historically low interest rates and opportunities to work from home due to COVID. Florida isn't only a great destination for New Yorkers, it is also the number one destination for international buyers. 

You can imagine what this is doing to the Florida housing market. I watched one house get listed at midnight, first showing was at 8am, and it was sold at 11am. The inventory for existing houses is very low because Floridians have no place to move to. When a house does come on the market, it will often get purchased site unseen within just a few days. 

We didn't want to buy a house unseen and we can't react fast enough to house sales when we are 1200 miles away. We decided to, instead, build a house so that we could have a little more control over location and move dates. 

What we found is that home builders are challenged with keeping up with the demand. We went to one community and the seller told us the current phase was sold out. We asked when the next phase opens up and she said "that phase is sold out too". We looked at Ryan Homes on Grassy Lake: they can only build 4 houses per month. They have a waiting list of people who want to sign contracts. Haines City has capped builders, such as Highland Meadows, to submitting only 11 houses for approval per month because Haines City can't keep up with the demand.

Our plan is to go to a KB Homes site in Minneola. Before KB Homes has even nailed one board, 25% of the community is already sold! KB Homes raises the base price of the home every time they sell 5 houses. That means we can expect to gain $50K in equity by the time the community sells out! And that timeframe might be in just a year or two.

How long can this boom continue for Florida? Many people remember the housing crash in 2008 that wiped out Florida home values. Will that happen again? 

My uninformed prediction is that Florida is going to continue to see growth. Even before COVID, an average 376 people were fleeing New York City with 3.57 million leaving just New York City in 2020. There are many more people choosing to trade winters and skyscrapers for beaches and sandals. 

T-Minus 188 Days: KB Homes Delay

 If you have been following along, you know that we picked the KB Plan 3016 at Lake Ridge in Minneola. We met with our real estate agent yesterday to strategize our next steps before informing KB Homes. 

We learned that the Lake Ridge Development had some problems passing its inspection and needed some additional work done to it. That was going to delay the first home construction until December 15, however, because it was so close to the holidays, they decided to delay it until January. As a result, they are taking deposits but they are not writing any more contracts until they get the site passed inspection. 

Because KB Homes has to do additional work to Lake Ridge, KB Homes has to take on additional expense. KB Homes doesn't do a CDD, instead, they recoup their costs in selling houses. As a result, the additional expense going into this additional work will cause a price increase. At this stage, they don't know how much the price increase will be.

So... that is disappointing. If KB Homes doesn't work out, our Plan B in the Lynn Haven by Ryan Homes at Grassy Lake in Minneola (it is actually on the other side of Grassy Lake compared to Lake Ridge). The lot we want at Grassy Lake becomes available in January. The house is smaller, the lot is smaller, but the location is better. I think we'll "win" regardless of which one we get.

T-Minus 190 Days: House Decision Made

 We decided on the KB Homes Plan 3016 at The Reserve At Lake Ridge, which is located to the west of Grassy Lake in Minneola, on Rt. 27. We are getting the three car option and extended lanai on an upgraded lot.

It has been a long road to make this decision. We did a lot of analysis. In fact, we are still doing analysis (I am on page 40 of a 110 HOA contract). This will get us the most house in a good area for what we can afford. The cost is actually on the high side of where we wanted to be which means the pool might get delayed three to six months. 

Now that we made the decision, our next step it to talk it over with our Real Estate Agent. Then we'll discuss it with the builder's agent and get the paper work rolling. We hope to lock in a price before the next increase (increases seem to happen monthly). 

According to the estimated time tables, that should get us into the house at the end of August. We need to be in Florida by the end of June, so, we'll be renting for two months. It also means we'll have to load our stuff into PODS and pay to store them for an extra two months. There are many unknowns and it can be scary, but we are trying to deal with that with ample research and ample planning to reduce the number of surprises.

T-Minus 195 Days: Re-Evaluating KB Homes

 We had previously looked at the KB Homes 3203. When we started adding upgrades the cost became insane. We could afford it, but, I don't want to be house poor. I still want to go out to dinner whenever we want, go to Disney, and live comfortably. 

We decided to downgrade to the KB Homes 3016. It isn't all that much smaller but its base cost is $13K cheaper. While the 3203 had a cost per square foot (after upgrades) of $122, the smaller house unfortunately has a higher cost per square foot ($126), but overall it is cheaper. 

We considered going even smaller: the KB Homes Plan 2716 and Ryan Home's Crescent. The 2716 is significantly smaller than the 3016 yet only $9K cheaper with a very high cost per square foot ($137). The Crescent is a massive 25% smaller than the 3203, had a cost of $158/sqft, and had a layout I didn't really like. As a result, both the 2716 and the Crescent were crossed off our list.

We are now left comparing the KB Homes 3016 versus the Ryan Homes Lynn Haven. The 3016 is 219sqft larger and (estimated total monthly payment (including HOA and everything)) around $50/month cheaper, and $13 per square feet cheaper. 

We talked with a seller's agent about our plans to commit to a build soon, then put our house on the market in April, move to Florida in July, and (hopefully) have the house construction completed in August. She warned that we might not get approved unless we can either prove we can afford both mortgages, or, we say we will be using the New York house as rental property (not happening). That was unfortunate to hear. We had been warned several months ago by our sales agent that a builder might require our New York home to be listed. We can't list the house that early - the house isn't ready to be listed and we can't afford to have the house sell and leave us homeless. 

That news was a bit of a set back and we'll have to explore this issue with our real estate agent some more to understand it. I can't imagine we are the only people in this situation and I don't believe it will be a problem.