We moved down to the Peninsula in 2001, while expecting our first child. We were convinced that the market was at its peak, but we decided to buy anyway, to get “in the game” and start building value. We found a beautiful new home in Burlingame, built to the maximun 3200 sq feet, on a typical Burlingame 6000 sq foot lot with a postage-stamp backyard. Mainly we loved that it was only a few blocks from the Broadway downtown area, and that there were 5 other families with young kids on the street for instant playdates. However, after 5 years, we really wanted a little more space, and a bigger backyard.
Louisa began looking in earnest in late 2005, and quickly figured out that to have the lot size we wanted we’d have to move to Hillsborough. But, most of Hillsborough has narrow, windy roads with no sidewalks or streetlights, so there is no neighborhood feel. Also, we wouldn’t feel comfortable with our kids riding their bikes on the street, nor could we walk down to the coffee shop on a Saturday morning. After a while, though, we discovered that there were a few streets in the flats near downtown San Mateo that were cul-de-sacs and might be similar to our block in Burlingame.
We spent the next 6 months focused on just these few streets, driving them, talking to people we knew on them, and looking them up on Zillow. Close friends of ours on one of these streets were always talking up how great their neighbors were, so when they told us that one of their neighbor’s houses was on the market, we eagerly looked up the address to see which lot it was. Unfortunately, it seemed to be a small lot, and the one we really wanted was the one next door.
Three weeks later, Louisa was browsing listings the day before we were going out of town for a week. She came across a house on “our” street that had just been reduced in price. It didn’t show up on our search, because we had specified 4 bedrooms, and it only had 3. And it turns out to be the one that our friends had mentioned, only they told us the wrong address. It was the one with the big lot!
We had just enough time before we headed to the airport to drive by the house and peek in the backyard. Then we called our agent from the airport and told her we were interested.
Over the weekend we contacted friends who had seen the place and got their feedback. Then we had another friend go and take cellphone pictures, and email them to me. As we got more serious, we set up a time for one of our best friends to walk through the house while on her cellphone with us, describing everything she sees. We also had our contractor walk through. All said the same thing: the house is old but serviceable, and the lot is absolutely magical. So, we wrote an offer, sight unseen.
Spending multi-millions on a house you have never seen is pretty scary. Doing it while on a family reunion vacation with 8 kids under 5 is nuts. We negotiated the final deal while out to dinner, running outside to answer the phone and asking the restaurant if we could use their fax. We finally got the deal at 11:30pm EST, and went to bed too exhausted to be elated.
Tom’s family already knew we were crazy, and that impression was confirmed the next day, as Tom monopolized both house lines for several hours to get the mortgage negotiated. With a 15 day close and no contingencies, we didn’t have much time, so the rest of the week was a whirlwind of insurance, title company nonsense, and other closing minutiae. We also had to get our old house on the market ASAP, because owning two homes in the 94010 area code is pretty scary, not to mention expensive.
We flew home Sunday, and headed right over for our first look at our new house. We were delighted that it was exactly what we expected: a serviceable house with an incredible backyard, on a fabulous street.
We visited the house just once more before the close, and spent the week signing documents, catching up at work, and starting to prepare our old house for sale. Over the weekend we started packing in earnest, while also cleaning and fixing problems. The next week we replaced the microwave (3 times!), repainted everything, re-stuccoed the back, re-sodded the front lawn, and replaced the carpet in the master bedroom. Every night we were up past midnight, packing our stuff for the move on Friday. We closed on Tuesday, but we hardly noticed, except to get the locks replaced, talk to the gardener, and have a fence guy estimate a new fence along the stream.
Friday July 28 was among the most stressful days of our lives. The movers arrived at 8, and the stagers at 8:30. We were running around directing traffic, packing remaining items, and getting stuff out of the way so the stagers could make the house look lived in, but not cluttered. The stagers had decided to use most of our furniture in the staging, so the move was mostly boxes.
Exactly 3 stress-filled weeks from the day we found out about the house, we moved in. In the early afternoon, we arrived with the moving truck, a bunch of boxes, and almost no furniture. We set up air mattresses for ourselves and the kids (we had one bed), and unpacked a selection of clothes onto the floors of the closets. Then we stacked the rest of the boxes in the garage, ate some pizza for dinner, and headed up to Tahoe for the weekend.
The weekend was just what we needed, and we started to relax a little. Sunday night we headed back, and had our first night in the new house. We still had a lot of crazy details to take care of to get our old house on the market by Tuesday, but somehow we made it. Now we are hoping to get a good offer soon.
We moved from a new house with a great layout, but no room for improvement, to a smaller house with a crazy layout, but the opportunity to build our dream house on the perfect lot. Now we need to figure out how best to make use of that awesome potential.