01-31-2018, 01:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-31-2018, 01:43 PM by D_Eclipse9916.)
This thread reminded me!
We are moving in 2 months down to Mooresville, NC. Jess and I have lived in Northern Virginia (Vienna and Reston) our entire lives. As many of you know, about 9 months ago we had our first baby boy. We currently live in a townhouse, and although we love it, we wanted bigger (especially if we have 2 kids). The current neighborhood has no place for kids to play, and neighbors drive way too fast in the neighborhood for me to consider playing out front without strict supervision.
Jess and I prefer to be home and willing to push back on our careers in order to do so. So in the span of 2 months, Jess went part-time and requested full remote; and I requested full remote. This left us the ability to move anywhere in the country. With her being a govvie, and me working for Internal Deloitte, we have very stable jobs. In the worst case for me, Deloitte has offices in Charlotte; and my career focused on Finance; Charlotte has lots of jobs for my type of career.
Let's back up a second. We can live anywhere right? Why Charlotte? To be honest we first looked at the Outer Banks and beaches along South Carolina. We quikcly realized beach towns had limited "families" with the same ideals and school systems that were very hit or miss. I wanted to look in Denver, but Jess quickly shot that down and I agreed. I am tired of winter. If I want to go skiing, we will rent a house for a week/month at a proper ski resort. Charlotte was always on our radar and I wanted to on a lake/close to a lake. I went down to Lake Norman and liked the area. After some school searching, we realized we wanted to be in the Mooresville School District.
Requirements for house itself:
3+ car garage with 12+ foot ceilings
In a neighborhood with young families
HOA - (it keeps the neighborhood nice, I will deal with the nimbys)
Backyard and Privacy
Not a cookie cutter house (ak a more modern design interior)
The 3 car garage ended up being an easy no brainer in Mooresville since a decent amount of the population has boats/toys. What we didn't expect was the tough balance between Privacy, neighborhood with young families, and cookie cutter. Most houses on the water under $1M were not in a neighborhood or were very old houses. I ended up having to give up direct lakeside living. One of the advantages to moving was to lower expenses! Buying a $1M+ house was not going to do that in the least.
We took 2 days and actually were disappointed in the selections. Jess and I started to wonder if we should start looking at other areas. When we drove by a new neighborhood being built. Decided to drop by and were blown away by the model home. After talking with the agent, we were able to find a house with some character (2 story great room, open kitchen, master on main), while meeting my requirements for the garage (13 foot ceilings). All in a very affordable and family friendly neighborhood.
We had 2 choices on lots because of the size of the house and requirement for basement. One had Lakeviews, but backed up to the lakehouses; and the other was a corner lot that would back up to park land. You can figure out which one we chose! I always thought I would move to a location with lots of land; but that’s mutually exclusive with a kid friendly neighborhood. :/
Our family was moving down as well. My mom found a beautiful new build lakefront house with private dock (jealous!) about 3 minutes from our neighborhood, and Jess' Mom is having a house built in our neighborhood about halfway down from where we are. We are close with our families and this ended up being a fantastic choice. Currently we live 6 minutes from her mom and 15 minutes from mine, so they are a "bit" closer, but hopefully not too much of a change in privacy.
Hopefully this move enables us to relax a bit more and spend more time doing the things we love. Roof just went on the house this past weekend and we hope plenty of our friends in MM come down and visit us. We are just minutes from some great State Parks, the National Whitewater facility and a massive freshwater lake that god willing I can convince the wife into another bad decision of a boat. Doesn't hurt we are 10 minutes from all the NASCAR team's shops as well and the GoPro Motorplex Karting Facility...
![[Image: 4ef6cbcfe98ebd55e09d05968a4bdf68.jpg]](https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180131/4ef6cbcfe98ebd55e09d05968a4bdf68.jpg)
We are moving in 2 months down to Mooresville, NC. Jess and I have lived in Northern Virginia (Vienna and Reston) our entire lives. As many of you know, about 9 months ago we had our first baby boy. We currently live in a townhouse, and although we love it, we wanted bigger (especially if we have 2 kids). The current neighborhood has no place for kids to play, and neighbors drive way too fast in the neighborhood for me to consider playing out front without strict supervision.
Jess and I prefer to be home and willing to push back on our careers in order to do so. So in the span of 2 months, Jess went part-time and requested full remote; and I requested full remote. This left us the ability to move anywhere in the country. With her being a govvie, and me working for Internal Deloitte, we have very stable jobs. In the worst case for me, Deloitte has offices in Charlotte; and my career focused on Finance; Charlotte has lots of jobs for my type of career.
Let's back up a second. We can live anywhere right? Why Charlotte? To be honest we first looked at the Outer Banks and beaches along South Carolina. We quikcly realized beach towns had limited "families" with the same ideals and school systems that were very hit or miss. I wanted to look in Denver, but Jess quickly shot that down and I agreed. I am tired of winter. If I want to go skiing, we will rent a house for a week/month at a proper ski resort. Charlotte was always on our radar and I wanted to on a lake/close to a lake. I went down to Lake Norman and liked the area. After some school searching, we realized we wanted to be in the Mooresville School District.
Requirements for house itself:
3+ car garage with 12+ foot ceilings
In a neighborhood with young families
HOA - (it keeps the neighborhood nice, I will deal with the nimbys)
Backyard and Privacy
Not a cookie cutter house (ak a more modern design interior)
The 3 car garage ended up being an easy no brainer in Mooresville since a decent amount of the population has boats/toys. What we didn't expect was the tough balance between Privacy, neighborhood with young families, and cookie cutter. Most houses on the water under $1M were not in a neighborhood or were very old houses. I ended up having to give up direct lakeside living. One of the advantages to moving was to lower expenses! Buying a $1M+ house was not going to do that in the least.
We took 2 days and actually were disappointed in the selections. Jess and I started to wonder if we should start looking at other areas. When we drove by a new neighborhood being built. Decided to drop by and were blown away by the model home. After talking with the agent, we were able to find a house with some character (2 story great room, open kitchen, master on main), while meeting my requirements for the garage (13 foot ceilings). All in a very affordable and family friendly neighborhood.
We had 2 choices on lots because of the size of the house and requirement for basement. One had Lakeviews, but backed up to the lakehouses; and the other was a corner lot that would back up to park land. You can figure out which one we chose! I always thought I would move to a location with lots of land; but that’s mutually exclusive with a kid friendly neighborhood. :/
Our family was moving down as well. My mom found a beautiful new build lakefront house with private dock (jealous!) about 3 minutes from our neighborhood, and Jess' Mom is having a house built in our neighborhood about halfway down from where we are. We are close with our families and this ended up being a fantastic choice. Currently we live 6 minutes from her mom and 15 minutes from mine, so they are a "bit" closer, but hopefully not too much of a change in privacy.
Hopefully this move enables us to relax a bit more and spend more time doing the things we love. Roof just went on the house this past weekend and we hope plenty of our friends in MM come down and visit us. We are just minutes from some great State Parks, the National Whitewater facility and a massive freshwater lake that god willing I can convince the wife into another bad decision of a boat. Doesn't hurt we are 10 minutes from all the NASCAR team's shops as well and the GoPro Motorplex Karting Facility...
2020 Ford Raptor
2009 Z06
1986.5 Porsche 928S
2009 Z06
1986.5 Porsche 928S