It feels so good to finally share this exciting chapter with you all! We bought a little farm in Milton Georgia, one of our favorite areas in all of the Atlanta Metro Area. Where do I begin to even tell you guys about how this all came about! I guess I will just let the words pour right out of me because it’s one hell of a ride so grab your wine, your coffee, your milk and cookies!
So a while ago we told you guys that we were house hunting more like a year ago, we had a real estate agent that a friend had shared and she set us up with some alerts as all agents do but everything that was coming through I kept getting frustrated because it was nothing that peaked my interest. I had found a house I really loved and when I went into labor it had gone off the market, and I was completely crushed, maybe I was hormonal or just simply devastated or both, but I loved the house, but we just weren’t quick enough to act on it. After that I took about a month off and finally went back to searching via Zillow. After a few months I told Arnel, I don’t think our agent gets what we are looking for and they just think this alert thing is going to cut it, I know you are suppose to see the homes but I just kept saying No to everything. I also didn’t want to waste her time either so we had to go our separate ways.
Then our other friends said they had a great agent that they really liked him, he had sold their condo and he seemed really great. I gave him a call and told him our criteria and what we had in mind. Mind you by then Arnel and I were already at a point of wanting a fixer upper, like knocking down walls and everything or a tear down completely. He kept kind of pushing a regular move in ready house for us and if you know me then you know that anytime you try to force something on me after I say No to it then I am just going to think you have a hidden agenda and that you don’t really have my best interest in mind. I remember calling the agent up one afternoon and I was like hey I found this property on Zillow. Mind you he had alerts set up but they weren’t that great either. He was like okay I will pull some information but I have other showings. I was like okay well you go do that, Arnel and I will go drive by it. So this is mid July and I have kind of taken things into my own hands and realized it’s something that I will have to make happen and no more waiting on other people.
The house was located in Milton, which is where I have been wanting to find a house already or a house we can tear down and build. Milton has been on my list of places to live in, but finding the perfect little place for us wouldn’t be as easy as it seems. The area is gorgeous, the schools are top notch, and the area is just to die for, surrounded by beautiful landscape and homes, horse country and winning best quality of life as a city. I mean what more could I want?!
Anywho, so one July evening without my make up on, being 4 months post-partum, in my oversize shirt neon shorts, I said Arnel let’s just go drive by this house, it sits on a few acres and If we like it then we can tell our agent to look at it. So we drive by, seeing the beautiful landscaped property, I mean it was gorgeous, just as we were driving past it, I told Arnel to do a U-turn so we can drive by it again. We turned around and as we headed out towards the main road, I see an elderly man walking towards his mailbox, I screamed “Arnel stop the car and roll down your window” Something inside me said just talk to this man, what’s the worst he could do, tell you to “call my agent.” So we talked and he told us about his property he was selling, but he then told us he had another property adjacent to his that he was selling, an old family farm that was in his family since the early 1950s. I thought wow that’s amazing, he said it’s right here, right next to this property. I wrote down our names and numbers on a piece of paper I found in the car and wrote “the couple in the red car.” We also called his agent because I wasn’t going to wait on my agent to do the calling and I figured what was going to happen, it’s not like agents have some secret language and I don’t have the patience to wait on my agent to get back to me since he is too busy doing other showings. So I called the seller’s agent asked her about the properties the “old man” was selling and she told me the price. My jaw just about dropped to the floor, I was like well we can’t afford the entire farm but can we split it in half, she said let me talk to the sellers and see what we can do.
She got back to me and said that the seller was willing to figure it out and divide it in two. I thought that’s amazing, so I tell our agent, who at this point I figured out he has no idea how to sell land, nor has he ever sold it. I kept saying well can you offer this, what about that, he kept giving me the run around until I finally said how about we go our separate ways, when you know more than your agent and it seems like you are walking them through this journey then it’s time to depart. At the end of the day, no one cares about you and your money like you do. Don’t get me wrong, agents can be amazing, but sometimes we aren’t lucky enough to meet them (there is an amazing agent story later so keep reading). At this point I had created a great relationship with the seller’s agent who came back and said that she thinks they will hold off on selling the big farm. I was so bummed I thought gosh, if we had just had the right person to put in our offer and do things the right way then we could have had it by now. well a few weeks passed by and after dozens of homes we had viewed and driven by, I kept telling Arnel I want the “old man’s land/farm” something tells me not to give up.
One August morning (4 weeks had gone by), I texted Arnel and I told him, hey babe I am going to try this one last time with the old man’s land (the family farm) and I am going to see if they are willing to sell it to us. I sent the seller’s agent a text and I said I think Arnel and I would like to put in an offer, if we can’t then I think we will just have to completely forget about this land and move on. She sends me a text and says, okay the sellers will sell it to you. Reading those words, I think I just about lost my breath!
When I saw that text, I ran out of my meeting called Arnel and I said babe trust me on this, can we just put in our offer. The agent said would you all want to walk the property this afternoon, I said ABSOLUTELY, meet you there at 1pm. We ended up spending all afternoon walking around the old farm, the old barn that sits there and learning about everything. I was so excited I couldn’t contain my excitement! Just a reminder, we had fired two agents already and we told the sellers we weren’t working with one and the selling agent said that’s okay. I also told them, the seller’s wouldn’t be paying a buyers and sellers commission, which was another great selling point. Just so you know, as the buyer you don’t pay your agent anything up front, however they get a commission from the sellers, and how does the seller get his money, FROM YOUR OFFER. So at the end of the day, all sellers have a “TAKE HOME AMOUNT” in that amount they have calculated all fees, all commissions and have a price in mind that they aren’t willing to go under. I am not saying don’t work with an agent but in our case, we had become friends with the sellers and had worked closely with their agent that deep down I trusted them. We hired a real estate attorney, wrote up an offer and a contract, put in all our stipulations and made sure that we close once the farm was divided into two.
Now to get land subdivided which is essentially an imaginary line that gets placed on a piece of property, but before that happens, there are a million things that are required, from city approval, county approval, public works, soil testing, water testing, I mean the list goes on and on and on. Once all that is done, it goes to a council for a approval, then once that happens, it gets registered with it’s new lines with the city, county and state. I mean this process is for another blog but let’s just say it’s a process. It also takes months, lots of meetings but the sellers were kind enough to let me do it all (I was going to get it done quicker), why they trusted me, I am not sure but they let me run around the city with their paperwork and let me do it. If I hadn’t done it all, then I am sure I would still be waiting because at the end of the day no one gets it done like you can and no one fights for something like you would fight for it. This journey was just an interesting one, we trusted the sellers, they trusted us. It was like this weird combination of trust in humanity, gut and the universe doing what it was meant to do.
I put my heart my soul and everything into buying this farm and I honestly can’t thank my husband enough for letting me run with my crazy idea. For empowering me and not losing his mind! Today as we sat at the table, he said he couldn’t have done any of it without me and I broke down just hearing it out loud. While I don’t take full credit, just the running around the city, crying to people lol and losing my mind; I am thankful for the sellers, their amazingly kind agent who was so patient, who guided us through things, who not only had her clients best interest but she also had ours, thankful for our attorney who had our back. Thankful that we got blessed to meet people like that!
It’s been a dream of ours to own a little piece of land, build our dream home and raise our little daughter! If you all are interested to follow along our journey, we will be documenting it on our instagram page @miltonfarmlife 🙂
We want to thank you all for supporting us, being so kind to us while we went MIA during the last few months, but hope you all understand.
Wishing you all A VERY HAPPY HOLIDAY SEASON, TIME OFF, TIME WITH THE KIDS, EVERYTHING ELSE HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY.
The Hasanovic Family loves you all very much!
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