My wife and I sold our first lake house in late 2020. Prices for existing homes, especially around lakes had skyrocketed and while we really liked our lake house, there were a few things we wished we had done differently. We decided to take a leap of faith and we sold it. Our ambition was to look for something that would be not only be a wonderful lake house, but also a potential retirement home.
Our wish list included lake front, mountain view a plus, nice community, and close to things to do outside of the lake. We looked for quite a while until we settled on Cherokee Lake in Bean Station TN. We found a piece of land that had water frontage to the main channel as well as a protective cove. It was in a gated community, and it was also flat, with a large yard that would be perfect for the kids to play, and an amazing view of the surrounding mountains. It was a perfect piece of land to build our dream on.
The biggest issue keeping us from buying it right away was that the cost of the property was pushing the limits of our budget. We started to do our homework to determine a package price of construction and land. After our last building experience, we had a better idea of what type of person we wanted to do business with. We consulted real estate agents and building suppliers around town we found a builder who seemed to check all the boxes.
We started out designing a basic concept of the house that wanted and worked with the builder to put together pricing estimates. After discussion with the builder, we were surprised to learn that the land we were looking at was owned by him! We were happy about the news because this provided him motivation to sell at a slightly lower price since he would build the house as well.
After some negotiations we settled on a price for the land and decided to pull the trigger. The closing on the land ended up taking around a month and a half to complete. During that time, we continued discussions with the builder and his design team. We settled on a final design however when it came time to discuss pricing for the house, the cost of construction went up significantly.
Unfortunately, this was around March 2021. As many of you know the United States was in the midst of a sharp increase in building costs. We had hoped that this increase would be temporary, but we underestimated the duration of the increases.
After a few words were exchanged with the builder, my wife and I headed back to KY. During our ride home we discussed our options. On one hand we had a piece of land that was one of those “once in a lifetime” pieces of land. We could wait out the unreasonably high prices and build later. On the other hand, holding the property would have had a serious impact to our normal cashflow due to how purchasing raw land is handled.
A few days later we received a phone call from the builder who said he felt bad about the way things had turned out and he had a buyer who would purchase the property from us, leaving us with a somewhat decent profit. We opted to give up on the property and go ahead and sell.
It was hard giving up on that piece of property but sometimes you have to roll with the punches that life throws at you.
typicalfisherman.com 
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