About two months ago, my wife and I were talking about moving from Texas to the Charleston, SC area as we traveled to Florida for Thanksgiving. Our son, daughter-in-law, and three grandchildren live in the area. On that trip, we decided to see if it was feasible at all to do the move. My job allows me to live anywhere since I work from home.
We poured over our finances for a couple of weeks and scoped out the housing market. It became pretty evident early that Summerville was the only place we could afford. We made several spreadsheets, including loan amortization, tax comparisons of Dorchester and Berkeley counties, lists of developments under construction, and budget calculators.
Our initial plan was to go to Charleston for the New Year break and tour housing areas, decide on a house plan, and start executing the process if it all was feasible. We started calling home builders and making appointments. Unfortunately, we quickly learned that most of the homebuilders in the area were spec homes, and we couldn't even choose the paint color. "We build what we think will sell" was the mantra of most builders. Most of those builders had a lot of bad feedback on rating sites.
One great call we had was with Michael Piazza of Mungo Homes. He is the salesperson at Six Oaks subdivision near Summerville/Knightsville. First, while they are a production builder, they allow a great degree of customization. That checked the first box for us in building a home. Next, we wanted a home plan that would work for us as we age (we are in our 60s). We also wanted something unique and not "cookie cutter" boring. We immediately fell in love with the Lafayette plan. Mungo/Six Oaks is a planned and phased community, so the number of homesites for such a house was limited. We chose the Lafayette B elevation, and things came together rapidly. This was early December, and we have gone from considering a move to buying a home in a neighborhood, totally unseen.
Our lovely realtor, Debbie Cromer, Century 21 Properties Plus, spent a couple of hours driving the roads to Six Oaks with her cell camera to record the neighbors and then the community of Six Oaks. She walked through the partially finished model, pointing out various aspects of the home. I'll pause here to say how wonderful she has been in this process.
Not even a month after the conversation began, we signed the initial documents to purchase a home in the Six Oaks community from Mungo! Our plans for shopping around changed to picking the final structural elements and visiting the design center.
We contacted two potential banks for financing, and both have been great. Mungo has their own financing group, Silverton Mortgage, and we are Navy Federal Credit Union members. Both have been great through the pre-approval process. We'll have up to the closing date, hopefully sometime in July, to see the rates and deals for both organizations. There will be more on these later on. Many lovely people in these two banks.
As this all became a reality, we started trying to organize our move. We made a calendar of how we would move from January to when the house is ready. We started calling companies that could help us move and settled on two moving methods. First, I'm a Tillman Scholar, and U-Haul, as a partner of the foundation, offers a free move to the scholars. I contacted the Pat Tillman Foundation, and they arranged the reservation with U-Haul. We have a truck reserved for March to move about 1/3 of our belongings. Our goal is to get "thinned out" and start patching and painting in preparation for the sale of our house in Texas. We are so thankful for U-Haul! Many companies claim to help veterans, but few that support them to the degree of U-Haul. I can't say enough good about how wonderful they have been thus far.
The next move will happen in April, and we are using Units Moving and Portable Storage. They have really been wonderful in helping set up the arrangements. The folks here are good people.
So... back to the house. We sat earlier this week with Ms. Denee Warren of Mungo and picked out all of the design options for our new home. It was a WONDERFUL experience. There was no upsell pressure, only combining colors and designs that matched our tastes and desires. Granted, we knew what we wanted for many of the options before we arrived, but my wife and I are sometimes "design challenged," and we needed help. Denee and Debbie guided us through many great options and let our desires lead the way. What is very cool is that our final design ended up a few thousand lower than we expected!
Afterward, filled with anticipation, we drove back to the model home at Six Oaks and walked through it again, realizing our design choices in the home. This whole process has been great.
We are back home, tired and facing many challenges, but filled with joy to be closer to our family in Charleston. Packing and moving are not fun, but we are gathering energy for this in the next few months. More to come!
