Although our original reason to come to central Florida at this time was to attend the Ligonier National Conference, we anticipated that we would also be preparing to move to central Florida so we have been house-hunting since Friday after doing some homework while still in Indiana. I make the point about doing our homework because online mechanisms have been a mixed bag in our search.
While I have felt very confident that mechanisms such as streaming of local radio programs have been extremely helpful in our orientation to central Florida living, other mechanisms such as virtual tours of prospective properties haven’t been nearly so helpful as we quickly learned after visiting a property which looked very good online, but whose physical condition left much to be desired.
Accordingly, we have now turned our attention to buying a new house directly from one of the few builders who is currently building in this distressed market. We had not anticipated this option so it has required some flexibility to which we are still reacting. Nevertheless, we are now in the second phase of this new option as we are intending to determine IF we can afford “a bit more house” after concluding that our initial choice which we could have clearly afforded is just a bit too small. In this regard, we are applying a lesson learned from our central Indiana experience where we moved to a larger home only five years after moving to Indianapolis. I’ve been saying this central Florida house is the “last house I intend to buy” (Laura has warned me to be careful or I’ll “eat my words”) so I’m glad we caught ourselves after revisiting the house on which we had put a refundable deposit on Friday.
Let’s see how it goes today!