Landing in Bodega Bay

I feel like we sort of crash-landed in Bodega Bay last spring and we’re still in a stage of recovery. We have a beautiful lot here and had been planning to build a house for nearly two years. Our youngest daughter was graduating from high school in June 2008 and it seemed the perfect time to fulfill a life-long dream of moving to the coast. We were consumed with the process of working with architects, engineers, contractors, the county, mortgage brokers, realtors, and financial consultants, painstakingly planning every single detail of the new house. Our new family home was coming to life, we walked through it daily in our minds, visualizing our new routines, imagining where we’d place all of our family’s cherished furnishings and personal belongings.

Everything was going smoothly. We got our building permits and were almost ready to break ground. We sold our family home in Petaluma and secured a temporary rental in Bodega Bay in which to live during construction, when suddenly it all began to fall apart. A series of red flags began popping up in alarming succession. The subprime mortgage mess was looking bigger than experts had initially predicted, real state values started dropping rather than stabilizing as expected, construction loans started going up, building costs weren’t coming in at the prices promised, and so on. We suddenly realized we had to pull the plug and reevaluate everything.

So here we are and not sure what our next step will be. The place where we're living is lovely, it’s really perfect for our family and work. But I’m still adjusting to the fact that it’s not at all where we thought we’d be right now. We’re grateful we got out when we did, thankful we didn’t lose our home as so many others did last year. So for now we'll just sit tight, make peace with the situation, and see where this leads.