Lacey Parr: How we came to purchase our 1st home

This is not meant to be an advice article, we are complete newbies at home buying so this post is more about chronicling how we got here!

We have been toying with home ownership for about 4.5 years! After we graduated, Nate did not have a real job for a few months so we stayed with family. That was an incredible blessing and I hope to pay it forward in the future for our children or another young family. When he got his job, we got a realtor and almost bought a condo. But I just couldn't let myself buy something with no outdoor space for Bridger (he was a baby at the time). Luckily, we came across our rental and lived there for 4 years! With rent + utilities totaling $850/month, our little junky house couldn't be beat! But the catch was, the land had been re-zoned for high-density housing and could be sold at any time to developers.

Photo by Cate Johnson

So because of that, we continued to toy with the idea of buying. Sometime in 2014 we shopped around but with a budget of $150,000...the houses were so terrible that we put that idea quickly out of mind. (I'm talking about homes with 6 ft ceilings, dirt basement floors all on teeny lots.)

We even toyed with the idea of a tiny house. But like many tiny home enthusiasts have found, finding a place to park it is no easy task. The point of a tiny home is to park it on a beautiful piece of land so you can spend most of your time outside. But as much as we loved Utah, land prices were enormous! So this idea didn't last.

We continued to save and dream of a house all our own on a little property. In the meantime, we enjoyed the little rental and the big lot it sat on! We had a great neighborhood and friends close by. But with each addition to our family, that 800 sq ft got smaller and smaller! And the fact that it could sell to developers at any time hung over our heads. We never really felt settled.

Photo by Cate Johnson

As we dreamed of what we wanted in a future home, we realized how hard it would be to find in Utah. Every several months, Nate would spend a lot of time applying for jobs elsewhere. In fall 2015, he got a job offer in Maine but we ended up turning it down. Our rental was finally sold to developers and we wondered when we would need to move out.

The following fall (2016), we joined a rural housing development grant program. In Utah, it was known as Self Help Homes. Basically, you put in a bunch of sweat equity and get a new home at a smaller price. We were excited for a while but the lot was TINY and after getting a better idea of what was required (30 hours of work each week at specific times), we weren't feeling it anymore! And we realized, we don't even want to live in Utah...why would we sacrifice months and pay for this house if we don't want to really be here?! So we pulled out.

Anyway, the months went by. Nate had a job interview in Washington. Then he applied for a job in the Twin Cities. When neither of those worked out, we decided that we ought to try settling down in Utah once and for all. It felt good to make a decision on that! It helped that we were out tromping in the snow at Rock Canyon on a beautiful Utah winter day. So we got preapproved again (this time for more money, lol) and started shopping. Haley Ostler was so helpful for this! We even put an offer on a home in Provo. After we didn't get that one, nothing really felt right. A home would check all our boxes (or most of them!) but we couldn’t say yes. During this time, I found the Duluth job opening and Nate applied!

Saying yes to this job was so easy. We had been hoping for a change for years. We loved Utah and tried to appreciate each unique part of it but it never felt like home. We needed green. We needed water! We needed more space. And cheaper housing options!! (The homes we were looking at in Utah were $220-230k and the same kind of--or better--homes in Duluth were $160-190k). Some really cool things fell together for us. My midwife had spent a lot of time last year jumping through hoops for us and we were reimbursed for the majority of the cost of Riah’s birth! And we got a GIANT tax return. We were able to put that money away for a down payment. (In Utah, we had to apply for down payment assistance.)

So when Nate got to Duluth, he went to look at a home outside of Duluth in a rural area. The realtor was really pushy and it even though it was the first house he had seen, she told him to put an offer on it or there would probably be a bidding war. We had no idea what the market was like and decided to go ahead with the offer. When I saw it, I loved the land! Tons of space for letting the kids grow up wild. Wasn’t excited about the house at all. It had potential but needed some work. And with it being on a small river, the fear of a flood was very real. After the inspection, we decided to pull out. It had so many issues!! And it was at the top of our budget anyway.

Once we got a little settled in Duluth, I realized how much I liked being in town and we both liked being closer to Lake Superior. So we decided since this is our first home, trading in lots of land for being in town and close to Superior was a good deal. Getting a house way out in the country in a brand new place seemed really isolating. Anyway, we got a new realtor (we loved Liz!) and she took us to dozens of homes. We got close to offers on a couple others but weird maintenance things came up. The search was stressful but also fun! I loved going to see homes!

Photos by Miranda Lavender

We are so glad we found this home! It's super close to the Lake, in a nice neighborhood, no work is needed and it's beautiful! Despite it being on a city lot, we feel like we have a pretty good amount of space and we feel like we are still living by the majority of our values with big trails and parks are within walking distance. We can also walk to just about everything we really need (except our church is like 10 miles away). A grocery store, doctor, dentist, bakery and more are within a mile. We feel supremely lucky. In 7-10 years, we can think about a new place with land but for now, we are so excited to be settled into our first home!!