March 2021: Big Family Update

It's been a non-stop few months in our family! In addition to juggling work with our girls at home and all of the uncertainty the past year has brought, we've decided it's time to shake things up even more. After all--we only live once! Why not throw in some extra crazy to an already insane time? Sharing a big family update with you today as well as some family photos we snapped a few weeks back while we were on a road trip in the beautiful Arizona desert.

We're Selling Our House

If you've been following along on Instagram, you may know that we've decided to sell our home! We were actually going to put it on the market back in October (when I initially shared this news!). The election was about to hit, though and we were ultimately advised to wait it out to see what the future held.Then, a couple of weeks back, it felt like the time was right! We had no idea where we were going to go but we were feeling like our current home was simply busting at the seams. Truth be told, we've found it incredibly challenging to live in a townhouse complex during COVID without a yard for the girls to run around in.Throughout my adult life, I've always been a big city girl who has never needed to have much space. For me, it was always about location. I'd live in a shoebox if I had to! But now, our two girls have changed everything for me! PLEASE give us ALL the yards!

Buying Our First Home Vs. Our Second Home

We bought our current home in the summer of 2017. It was a couple of months before Naiya was born and I remember hobbling around ALL of Los Angeles extremely prego, looking for our first home.I remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the LA housing market at the time. We were on a strict budget but wanted more than anything to become homeowners. We knew we wouldn't be able to comfortably raise a baby in our TINY apartment in the Miracle Mile area of LA and time was ticking!Growing up in in a small town outside of Albany, New York, the prices in LA absolutely blew my mind. I couldn't believe how high over the asking price each home was going for.  I learned you literally have to look at a listing and assume it will go for $100K-$200K over the price listed since there will (almost) definitely be a massive bidding war. We ultimately decided to venture "over the hill" into "the valley" and we found our current townhouse in the Valley Village area. There was still a bidding war but somehow, we won. We were SO relieved.It was a three bed, two-and-a-half bath, two story place. We loved the cement floors downstairs and the fact that it was so turn-key. Prior to finding this house, we saw SO many homes that looked like actual hoarders lived there. They were FULL fixer-uppers in our price range and we knew we simply wouldn't have the time to make these work. We literally felt like we hit the jackpot!

Finding Our Next Dream Home

In terms of our house search this time around, we have SO many different needs! First and foremost, we're looking for a home in a good school district. We're looking for neighborhoods that are ideally surrounded by other families with young kids. We're seeking a home with a safe, peaceful yard for the kids to run around in. Ideally, we'd LOVE to find a home that has potential to have an income property on it.All of this said, we've been on a crazy rollercoaster ride since we officially put our house on the market two weeks ago. We had to clear out our entire house to stage it (SO MANY TOYS HAD TO GO!). Then, we took the girls on a road trip to outside of Phoenix, Arizona to see Phil's parents. In getting out of the house, our realtor could do showings of our house whenever potential buyers were ready to see it. We snapped the photos from today's post in the desert just outside of their home and the view there was pure magic.

Finding Our Dream Home (Continued)

Once we got back to LA, we were on pins and needles--waiting to see if we received any offers. In the meantime, we ran around LA seeing as many listings as possible. This process is even crazier during COVID because there are no "open houses" like there used to be. Instead, you have to schedule each showing at a specific time for safety reasons. You line up amongst all of your "competition" and you're able to take one quick walk-through with your realtor.We ended up seeing a number of homes that we would have had to completely gut and start over with. We later learned a lot of these homes were going to go for over a million dollars. The LA market right now is even crazier than it was when we bought our home last time around!That said, we've identified a home we absolutely LOVE that is more turn-key! It was even more perfect that we leaned in on this particular property on my birthday a few days ago! I'm hopeful that over the next couple of weeks, I'll have some exciting news to share regarding our next steps. Looking forward to sharing more home content with you as we move forward into this next chapter! Photography: Bailey Brown