About 9 months ago when the stock market began to take a dive, we started contributing much less to Kris' 401k at work. Over that period, the funds in our savings started to creep up. We didn't really think about it too much until about a month ago. We thought that we should probably do something with the money since it wasn't doing anything in our checking account and short term CD rates are horrible right now (as I'm sure you've all noticed). Our original intention when moving to Maricopa was to make this our home for about 4 or 5 years, then move to Chandler. It was never really an option up to this point because of the cost of housing up there. Also, we never would have predicted that the housing market would fall so hard in Maricopa.
However, it is something that we really wanted to do for a number of reasons: 1) proximity to Kris' job, 2) more mature infrastructure in Chandler, 3) more and higher quality resources available for Trent since he is getting closer to the elementary school age (the special ed. at the Chandler school district is wonderful). Maricopa has been a great place to live, and we've made a lot of good friends, but when you have to drive 25 miles to get to the nearest Home Depot, Target, sit-down restaurant, movie theater, etc., etc., it starts to wear on you. The school system is pretty dismal out here as well.
So we crunched the numbers and made the decision to make the move. We put our house on the market last Wednesday and by Friday we had six offers. We accepted an offer from an investor who will rent the house back to us on a month-to-month basis until we are ready to move out. Saturday, we signed a contract to have a Shea home built in Chandler (SW corner of Ocotillo and Lindsay). It will be a bit smaller than the one we're in now, and is a 1-story home.
It will be finished around May of next year. We sold for about 60% of our original purchase price and the new house is about 140% the price of what we paid for our current house (for those interested on just how bad the market is out here). We figure that the housing market in Chandler will recover much faster than it will in Maricopa for many reasons, so the investment will have a faster return up there than it will here - at least that's what we're telling ourselves to stay positive when we think about the money lost.
So, it will be back to square one for us. Kris is feeling pretty secure at his job, and he's liking what he's doing. We're not depleating our entire savings for this whole endeavor, so we're still in a decent position financially. We feel that it's the right move to make, given our position in life right now. Anyway, that may be more than you all wanted to know, but we're pretty excited about the new prospect, and it did all happen a lot faster than we had expected.
