I didn’t focus on our problems when I talked to that reporter. I just described all of the pros of this development and what a great project it was for that area of town and for Waco in general. I hoped the buzz would convince someone that one of the Magnolia Villas houses would be perfect for them. That would mean we could actually start building them and maybe start selling some.
The article came out, and a couple of days later, a lawyer in town called me up. He told me his mother was living out on some acreage outside of town, and she needed a home that was smaller and closer to everything and easier to manage. We talked for a few minutes about what we were planning, and I told him why I thought one of the villas might be perfect for her, and by the end of the conversation he said, “I want one.”
“You want one?”
“Yeah. How much is it?”
“Well, the model that sounds right for your mom is $176,000 and change.”
“Great. Okay, meet me at my office on Wednesday and bring the contract.”
“Okay, great,” I echoed.
Now, the way things usually work, somebody wants to read the contract and get a second opinion and then bargain with you on the price. Then, even after they sign an agreement to buy the place, there are usually contingencies, and they have to take whatever down payment they have and go out and secure a loan. It’s a long, slow process that sometimes ends with nothing happening. So I didn’t get my hopes up too much about that one. But I was encouraged, and I was even more encouraged when the front-page article resulted in dozens of calls just like that one. I felt like we were on our way.
I went ahead and met with this new lead and I handed him the contract. He started reading it over. “Let’s see. Yep. All right. This is just a simple residential contract. So, you ready?”
I said, “Yeah. I’m ready to rock. So you’re telling me you’re gonna be our first Villa? Wow, this is such a big deal. Thank you, man. I appreciate it!”
“No sweat. I’m going to sign right here, and if you don’t mind signing right now, I’ll have my secretary make some copies.”
I signed, and he signed, and he handed it to his secretary. I stepped out to use the restroom. And when I came back, I found that this man had written out a check for the full amount and stuck it under a little paper clip with the contract.
“All right,” he said. “Go build Mom a great house. When do you think this will be ready? You think four to six months ought to do it?”
“Yes, sir. I promise. It will be four months if we’re lucky—six months worst-case scenario if we hit some bad weather or something. But I’ll let you know. Thank you. Your mom’s gonna be thrilled. I promise.”
I was walking on air when I left that office. It wasn’t just because the attorney’s check would allow us to catch up and begin to move forward with the rest of the development. I also knew that selling one of those villas sight-unseen would be all the kick-start we needed to eventually sell the rest of them.
People don’t like to shop at a strip mall with one store in it or to eat at a restaurant with only one car in the parking lot. They like to see action, activity, excitement—and that’s what we were going to have at Magnolia Villas. This one build meant we’d have a crew out there now, visibly working and building a beautiful house for everyone to see as they passed by on Bosque Boulevard.
Oh, we forgot to mention that. This development we were trying to build just happened to be right off Bosque Boulevard—the very same Bosque Boulevard where my shop once stood and where our headquarters for Magnolia Homes was still standing. It felt like something more than coincidence to us that we finally had a heartbeat for Magnolia Villas on that very same artery, just a little further to the west.
Anyway, we were so excited about making this the perfect house for that attorney’s mother that we wound up calling her and offering to meet with her so I could show her some paint colors and finishes and design the interior exactly to her liking.
The woman’s name was Peggy, and as her son, Dale Williams, had told Chip, she lived on a forty-acre farm about ten minutes outside of town.
The first time we drove up there, we didn’t think much of it. It was all about the business of finding out what this sweet woman wanted in her home. She invited us to come back up again and have coffee with her and said we should bring the kids. So we did. This property was pretty. There were some beautiful oak trees, and forty acres is forty acres—it’s nice to see all of that open land after living in the crowded way most of us live. But this wasn’t a farm with white fences or a beautiful farmhouse up on a bluff somewhere. It was all chain-link and barbed wire. The house was old and needed a lot of work. It just wasn’t anything that grabbed Chip or me around the collars and said, “Hey! Buy this!”
We knew that Peggy would be selling the place once she moved into her new villa, so you would think the two of us would have been looking at that property as something we could flip, at the very least. But we weren’t. I mean, I tend to be a love-at-first-sight kinda guy when it comes to houses, and I just wasn’t in love with it.
When the kids were all standing there at the end of the second visit, Peggy asked if they’d like to come back and play on her farm again. And the kids all said, “Yes, ma’am!” We’d been inside talking to Peggy and hadn’t even noticed how much fun they were having in that yard, so we were taken aback by their enthusiasm. “Well,” Peggy said, “next time y’all should go down and have a picnic in the pecan orchard.”
“Pecan orchard?” Chip asked.
“There’s a cluster of about twenty hundred-year-old pecan trees out back. It’s a real nice spot for a picnic. Go down there next time,” Peggy said.
So we did. We came back and had a lovely picnic under the pecan trees, and Chip and I both started to see this land in a whole other light. That night the two of us started dreaming together, just as we’d done back in the early days of our marriage.
“Can you imagine what it would be like to live on a farm?”
“Imagine how many chickens I could have on a place like this?” Chip said. He sounded like a little kid. “We could get goats. Cows, even!”
“You could get goats and cows, sure. As long as I don’t have to take care of them.”
“Oh, babe, you wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I want to take care of ’em!” he said.
I of course started seeing the possibilities for that old turn-of-the-century farmhouse. I imagined what was under those walls and what those wide-plank floors might look like if they were refinished. I imagined an addition. I imagined opening it up, moving the walls around, doing my best to give the kids plenty of space to run and slide in there, the way they did in the hallway at our current house.
Then we really got to dreaming: With all of that land, maybe we could put up a cool tree house. I could do more than just garden; I could build a greenhouse so I could garden year-round. We could get dogs again and let them run around free without the worry of neighbors trying to get us thrown in jail.
“I wonder how much they’ll want for the place,” Chip asked out loud. The fact that he’d said it out loud made it seem like a real possibility. Like he was thinking the same thing I was—how perfect this place would be to raise our family.
Peggy was kind enough to invite us to use that land anytime we wanted. “You don’t even need to stop in and say hi. Just treat it like your own,” she said. So we did. We went up to that property about once a week with the kids, letting them run around and stretch their legs and get fresh air. And as construction on Peggy’s villa was nearly complete, Chip found himself completely inundated with Magnolia Villa contracts and prospects.