The place is Santa Cruz, CA. The year is 1998 (A.D., nothing happened in Santa Cruz in 1998 B.C.) The York family is living in a nice 3 bedroom, 2 bath 1600 ft.2 house, but alas is quickly outgrowing it. One bedroom is almost 400 ft.2 and has been used as the combination office, game room, family room since we moved in, which leaves only two bedrooms : one for me and my wife Lynn, and one for my two children: Adrianna, 1, and Alexander 3 so we start off to find a new house. We want an office in the house, so the smallest house must be at least 4 bedrooms. The cheapest 4 bedroom house in the area we chose was about 2 1/2 times what ours was worth! (OK, 2 times but that was a fixer-upper, also known as a hopeless tear-down). Argh!
We made the mistake of giving our name to a real-estate agent. Agents are not evil, but this one left a lot to be desired. She continually showed us houses that were the same size or smaller than ours, but cost 1 1/2 times more! She also appraised our house at about the same we originally paid, even though houses in the area were going for at least 20% more. This obviously wasn't working out. I don't remember exactly why, but we started entertaining the idea of building our own house.