You read that right — 5 acres to be exact. Let me start with a little backstory.
We have gone back and forth a few times in our 5 years together about moving back to Tennessee. If you didn’t know, that’s where Josh is from & has always wanted to go back. Two times we have VERY SERIOUSLY considered moving back (one time we even went up and did a few interviews). At the end of the day, as much as we would love to live there, it seems silly to leave when both of our families (& all of our siblings & my grandparents) are close by. So we decided we were going to put our roots down here.
Once we made that decision, we knew that we wanted a little Tennessee feel down here in Florida. So we started looking for land that was out towards the country with those kind of people — you know the ones who still say yes sir and have American flags hanging in their yards. Those are our kind of people.
So we started looking & it took us about a month to navigate the process of finding land in Florida because it is a LOT MORE DIFFICULT than you imagine. So many wet lands (Josh is now an expert on wet lands maps). So many rules about agriculture land and what buildings can be on that. So many properties with easements or power lines or reasons that you can’t build. We spent a lot of time driving out to land and looking, only to look up more information on it and be very disappointed.
We actually stumbled upon the one that we ended up with from looking at a near by property (which was a TOTAL swamp land) and this one was for sale by owner. We called & started the process and about 40 days later, we closed on the property.
It is about 35 minutes from where we live right now and about 15+ minutes out of town, but it is right near an up and coming area and the property value will probably increase in the near future as the buildings around it continue to grow (Publix set to open by the end of the year only 1 mile away — heck yes!).
Other questions we’ve been asked are if we have a plan to move out there yet — the short answer is no. We currently own (with a mortgage) the house that we live in right now, so we are going to work on paying down the land while we continue to live in our current home. There is some work to be done on the land (swapping barbed wire fences for bull wire bc dogs & kids // clearing some trees // cleaning up the lake area) so we want to do all of that and pour our money into that while we really think through what our next move is.
Don’t worry though, we will keep you updated along the way! Any other questions, drop them in the comments & we will make sure to answer them for you!
XOXO,
Hil
hrmarciano 