We are homeless – a farewell to a great house

It’s done…after eight years and three months, we are no longer homeowners in Las Vegas. The paperwork was finalized today and the sale closed.

We bought the house new at the end of April 2001, breathing deep from a purchase price that was nearly double the sale price of the Idaho Falls home we had just left. We grew from a small family of six (Melissa was 9, Colin 4, Carson 3, and Dylan just five months old) to a big family of seven (with kids aged 17, 12, 11, 8, and 4). It’s the only house Dylan or Levi have ever known – and the memories of others are faint for Colin and Carson.

Since our arrival we’ve poured a lot of time and energy and heart into making this house the home we wanted. It wasn’t our dream house, but it was a great house. It got its share of paint (and dents and dings), new (or new-to-us) furniture, artwork, and other elements that made it truly ours. We even designed and installed the landscaping (and then just this year converted the front yard to desert landscaping on our own, with all seven of us creating the design, stripping the sod, shaping the dirt, digging the holes, planting the plants, and placing the rocks).

We loved having friends and family over for barbecues on our patio or buffets spread on the kitchen island. The garage hosted a batting cage and an uncountable number of projects and repairs that included building pinewood derby cars, repairing bicycles, and finalizing school assignments. We played piano and guitar in the front room; in the family room we played Guitar Hero, watched movies, cranked the stereo, and hung out with each other and friends and family.

And we never got tired of the park just beyond our backyard (witness the path worn from our back door to the gate in the back fence). Melissa built up her right arm throwing and pitching across the park with Jason for hours on end; Colin, Carson, and Dylan followed suit. Yvonne chased two boys learning to walk and then run. We played baseball, wiffle ball, home run derby, Frisbee golf, lacrosse, football, tag, basketball, and many more games there.

We met our best friends in the world in that park, where a simple introduction just beyond our back fence planted the seeds of a friendship that grew into a relationship between two families that we will cherish and nourish for the rest of our lives.

There were many times, as the value of our house skyrocketed in the red-hot Las Vegas market (more than doubling over just a few years), we considered moving into another neighborhood to take advantage of our newfound “wealth” (and escape a certain set of boundaries). But the park was our set of “golden handcuffs” – no matter how nice the houses we looked at were, none could offer a backyard that compared to that @#$&%! park, so we never could pull the trigger on a deal.

In retrospect, that park finally helped make our move possible.

The “value” of our house plummeted back to earth in recent years, resting not far above where we bought it. If we’d have moved to a bigger house to capitalize on the mirage of equity gains, we doubt that we’d have been able to sell here and buy in Maryland.

We are happy that the house sold quickly, even though we didn’t make a lot of money in the current housing market.

We didn’t raise a fortune on this house, but we did raise a family. We hope the family that bought our house is as happy as we were.

In the end, we are also happy to move on to a great opportunity and another house, in Maryland, armed with lots of ideas and motivation – and experience – for making a new-to-us house into our new home.

If you are interested in a barbecue on the patio, a buffet spread out on the kitchen island, or wiffle ball in the back yard, we’ll be less than an hour north of Washington, D.C. We’ll leave the light on.