Search for a new home: Where to look? New vs Old? New construction?

    Our search for a new home was a wild ride. There are so many questions you need to ask yourself to start the process: Where to look? Old vs. New? Fixer Upper vs Breaking Ground Construction? You think you know what you want then realtors start sending all of the options and you are inundated. My husband, Jeff, and I decided we wanted to look at new construction and also had several realtors we worked with over the years help with the process. Nothing ever seemed to fit our style, vibe, and the idea of what we wanted for the future. There were properties from Irvine up to the South Bay. If anything it would give me ideas on the trends in real estate enticing me to want to get back into this field, as I had previously worked in it. We had at least seven realtors that sent us properties on the daily. We started to look in Texas, Florida, and Arizona as we were thinking that we needed to move outside of California to get what we wanted. I have lived in Texas and Florida at one point of my life so I was leaving it up to Jeff to choose the order of states that he desired to move to. It changed several times. I continued to look at different options within my company to relocate, but when something popped up, I could not pull the trigger to make the move. I had already lived in both Texas and Florida and with Arizona I felt landlocked. I could not shake my gut feeling that we were not meant to leave yet. There was more for us to do. Finally, after choosing the different areas around Southern California that fit our needs, we chose the inland area of Temecula. It is Southern California's wine county and still a very nice area to live in. 
    We started looking at all of the new master planned communities out that way; probably looked at 20 different communities and 60 different homes. There were a lot of options but none that were perfect for us. I knew that if I was going to move out that way then I needed my own pool. I’m not much of a community pool person as I like the privacy, relaxation and the convenience of having it right in your own backyard. I was talking to one of my customers when they mentioned Canyon Lake which is where they grew up. We were actually pretty smitten with Canyon Lake as it was a cute little lake community built in and around mountains. It is a gated community that has a population of about 12k. I consider it a golf cart community which is right up our alley. There is a golf course, equestrian ranch, community pool, a couple of restaurants and we have our own fire department. We were not impressed with any of the renovation projects we kept looking at and the Realtor suggested why not buy a vacant plot and build what we wanted from the ground up. He said that we could get what we wanted for under $500k. I mean, why not! 
    My husband and I knew that this was the direction we both wanted to take and were up for the challenge. We purchased the vacant lot in August of 2020 and no matter how weird that year was we were determined to start to build our life out there in our little piece of paradise. The canvas was blank and we set out to make our dream home a reality.