A new direction

The past week has been eventful. Our realtor ran out of houses to show us and has had difficulty in connecting with the owners of building lots. Many of the sellers are private individuals or contractors and are not interested in talking with a realtor about selling. Obviously there would be a realtor's fee to pay.

Nevertheless, Sylvia did make contact with a realtor who is handling the sale of lots in a nice development in east Dallas. She sent me a copy of the CC&Rs for this area. What a disappointment. The document is 31 pages long. Among the things that are not allowed in this development are 1) flagpoles, 2) wooden fences (only wrought iron!), and 3) (my personal favorite) "your garage door may only be open when moving a vehicle or other equipment into or out of the garage." We will not be living in River Gleann.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch...Jill and I made a trip to Dallas on Tuesday. We had decided to look at as many lots as we could, so that we would be able to tell Sylvia which one we wanted to cut a deal on. (Sorry about that terminal preposition... it's been a long day.) We did look at the River Gleann lots again, and we looked at one in the Bridlewood neighborhood, a well established neighborhood with a good deal of understated elegance.

But we got really excited when we revisited "Cynthian Oaks" phase 2. We found a sign facing away from the street and thus unreadable. When we turned it around, we found, to our delight lots in our size and price range and a builder building homes in our size and price ranges.

I called the number on the sign and got a recording. "Oh, great," says I, "This is not going so well." I left a message and began exploring the area. Within about two minutes, my phone rang. It was Duane from First Equity Builders. I had quite a lengthy conversation with Duane, and neither of us flinched! That is to say, I didn't hear anything that discouraged me, and apparently Duane didn't either.

We told Duane we would explore the lots and look at a couple of houses he had built in the area and call him back. On Wednesday I called Duane and told him we are very interested to sit down and talk with him about building a home. He said he had a rough idea of what we want, and he would plot some plans to scale on a plat map for us. He promised to call in a day or so. We didn't hear anything today, so we are getting a little antsy.

Tomorrow is another day.