The "looking" stage

Since a few seem to be a bit amazed that I want a 2000 sf house, I did a little research on what is available for sale in the area we are looking, because honestly, I can't find much that is under that sf.

53 homes meet our criteria (in theory) of 3 bedroom/2 bath on at least 2 acres, with a shop. Of those only 16 were under 2000 sf. Of those I had to weed out the manuf. homes (we are NOT buying a mfg home again) and log homes (we don't want the maintenance/upkeep of a log home and I just really don't like them much) and I was left with 8. Of those I had to weed out all the ones that did not have an attached garage (I am not living in a cold climate with a detached garage) - I am left with 1 home choice and quite honestly the home holds no appeal to us at all.

Of all the other 36 homes, that are over 2000 sf., the avg. sf works out to be 2733 sf. A lot of these homes are way just too big (like over 3000 sf and some are log homes (common in this area), even though they fit in our price range and are nice homes.

doesn't leave us with a lot of choices :/  This might take some time to find something we like. We are picky, that's for sure. We might have to find something without the shop (priced lower without the shop), and build one.

I'm not interested in a 2 bedroom home. I work from home and need one of the rooms to be an office. The other room I want as a guest bedroom, for family.....or even on those nights when DH is snoring up a storm and I need to go get some comfortable sleep (and not on the couch). My current home of 1660 sf is 3 bedrooms and not very "spacious" at all. If all the rooms just a little bit bigger, it would be perfect space, hence the 2000 sf want.

I was emailing yesterday with a realtor in the area (referred by my mortgage lady) and he seems to be awesome, just like her. We have been trying to get some info on a piece of property for like over a week and no one will get back to us. Even the listing agent for the property! (that they have been trying to sell for over a year). There sure are a lot of people that suck at their jobs. He got me the requested info (basically wanted to know what the covenant's were) in a matter of an hour or so. He also contacted the realtor for that house I posted a pic of recently (that went off the market) and looks like we will set up a viewing of that house while we are there.They are putting it back on the market April 1st (we assumed they probably were). He's already emailed me again twice this morning. I like people who do what they say they are going to do and get it done quickly. That's how I work.

He also told me he had spoken with a builder last week and was given an estimate to build a home in the range of $117 sf (for a basic house) to $150 sf for a home with more custom details/finishes. I didn't really think it would cost $200 sf. Not in this area of the country. Where we currently live - yes, I'm sure it would easily cost that. I'm guessing with what we want/need we could be somewhere in the middle of that range. When we meet up with a builder next week, we can get his estimate too, based on us giving him what we are looking for.

I'm sure after next week's little trip we'll be able to make a decision on if we want to keep looking for that "perfect" house for us, or build a home.