Nearly a year ago this month, Clint and I were getting nervous about where we were going to live after we got married. We were engaged to be married May 31, 2025, and we had no home to move in to.

We couldn’t afford a custom build, so we knew we needed to find something manufactured…but where? Clint was convinced that we would find what we needed at one location in Mount Olive. He wanted to look at a few houses in one place, pick something, and be done with it. I had already been doing my research and knew it was not going to be that simple. In fact, I had already visited many places on my own. The first place we went together said what many had already told me: get pre-approved on your loan, then we will talk.

Something told me that our house was in Beulaville. I knew a specific seller that had a lot of options, so I insisted we went there after the Mount Olive location was a flop. We drove the extra hour and walked in a house where we were promptly told to wait a moment because we were supposed to have an appointment and be escorted. Okay…already a little more extra attention and care. I thought. When the woman came back to us, she didn’t ask how much money we had, she asked what we wanted. Her approach was so refreshing! Finally! Someone treats me like a human! I thought.

The second house we stepped into was the one. I just knew it! I opened the front door and saw our whole happy future in that place. Everything was made quality and new; I was in love with every detail. She hit everything on my bucket list and more. We went back to the office, started talking numbers, and got pre-approved for the loan to make it happen. It was that easy!

Well…it wasn’t that easy. To make a long story short, the lender came back with a counter offer lower than our home after they realized I am a 10-month (not 12-month) employee. The offer was too low to move forward with the house. We tried again with another lender and got the same approval then change. All the back and forth was costing us time, so we had to step down from the dream home and look at lesser homes. I was heartbroken. I cried for a week straight. Everything we looked at was a compromise I didn’t want to have to live with. The worst part was that the payment options with the lesser loan were worse than the greater one ever was originally. We were being asked to pay more for a house we didn’t love, and I just couldn’t settle for that.

After more months of trying to figure out the problem and how to fix it, we finally found a third lender that was willing to work with us for a higher loan amount. We retried for the dream house, fingers-crossed, and got approved! This time, however, I wasn’t excited. I don’t think I exhaled until the house was on our land and we’d signed the dotted line at closing.

Lesson 1: It ALWAYS takes more time

When we first found our home, the sales person said we could have it here in a couple of weeks. We were seriously thinking we would have to delay the process on purpose because that would have made us have our home before we were married or financially ready for the first payment. But “have it here” is not the same deadline as move-in ready. Move-in ready means the home is on the property, the foundation is done, the utilities are done, and it’s just ready to turn the key and open the door. The “have it here” part was just getting it from the maker to the seller. Even in that stage, you have to deal with supply delays that drive up cost on the maker and make your home cost more than it has to–and take longer to make. All in, to get a turn-key home, it takes a very large team of contractors that have to all do their work right and in order. A lot of variables come into play there; it never ends up happening as quickly as you hope or even as they predict. It took about 10 months to get into our house from sale to turn-key.

Lesson 2: Expect Unplanned Costs

There are a lot of things you don’t know when you go to buy a house for the first time. I was fortunate in the fact that I had land and experience with certain things to know what I wanted and what I didn’t. For example, I knew I didn’t want anything to do with county water; I wanted a well. I knew I could trust the water in my land, but I didn’t know how fickle that trust could be. We ended up having multiple delays in the house because of the well. First, it was issues with the digger and his equipment. Then, it was issues with the well itself busting and spraying a rainbow in the backyard that you could see from the main road. Then, it was the wrong switch sparking at the power box. Then, after all of that, we had contamination and hard water. I ended up having to spend a couple hundred more to get a water softening system and have it installed at the well. Now, hopefully, we are safe.

Lesson 3: Stay Thankful

In all the ups and downs of getting our home, it would have been very easy to turn bitter and hate the place we worked so hard to get. I had a very specific vision for the home we were creating. I wanted it to be a place of peace and restoration because our blended family was not that at all. In fact, my heart’s desire was to be a better wife and mother than either of them had known. Yet that whole dream had to start somewhere, and it started with my heart, my approach. If I let myself talk bad about the house, I would end up having a negative effect on the environment I was trying to create. Therefore, I didn’t let myself speak ill of the house or anything we went through to get into it. What I say repeatedly (and I mean it) is: I love our house, I love our home, it is the best gift we could have given ourselves.

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