Borrowing Confidence With A Little Help, Bryan And Carol Nielsen Found Home They Want, Plus A Little Ambiance

Bryan and Carol Nielsen had the impression they could afford little more than a trailer. They went to see Jan McDaniels at Washington Mutual, who quoted a loan for them. On reflection they felt their initial impression had been correct.

But they went back. McDaniel found them an Idaho Housing Agency loan, and a short time later, they found the home they had been thinking about for 10 years.

McDaniel said the Nielsens’ impressions are “very, very common.” She pointed out that her rate sheet is 15 pages, containing about 30 different lending programs for homebuyers.

“I would prefer they come to me first,” she said. “It’s an educational thing. I’ll sit and counsel, spending a good 20 to 30 minutes before I even begin the paperwork.”

“It takes a substantial amount of quality time to match people with the loan they need,” she continued. “They sometimes think they know what they want, but sometimes that’s not the best thing for them.”

Secure in the knowledge that they could get financing, the Nielsens continued to shop.

“We weren’t looking to buy,” said Bryan Nielsen. They had shopped and looked all over the Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls area and had developed impressions of the different areas.

One day they looked at Heartland, a development on Prairie Avenue near U.S. Highway 95.

“It had good ambience,” Nielsen said. “It felt like a place where we would want to raise our 3-year-old daughter.”

The normally conservative couple “found it so good,” as Nielsen put it, “that we jumped in.”

“Within a week,” Nielsen continued, “we put down some money to hold a lot.”

Bryan, 32, manager of Thrifty Car Rental in Spokane, and Carol, a receptionist for Coeur d’Alene Physical Therapy, had some general ideas about what they wanted: an image of the kitchen’s arrangement, a big lot, rounded corners, private areas in the house.

The options for Heartland’s build-to-suit plans helped them bring their images into concrete form.

“We had dreamed about it so long that we knew it when we saw it,” Nielsen said.

The contractor introduced some changes to their floor plan to suit the neighborhood. Because their dwelling resembled the model home, and because the Nielsens would prove to be only the second home in Heartland’s current phase, the builder added fascia over the garage. “We were thrilled about it,” Nielsen said.

In fact, the couple found the planning second only to moving in for excitement. They chose rounded corners, vaulted ceilings and fan lights. “It made it a home, not just a house,” Nielsen said.

At first, the family was leery of restrictive covenants. “We didn’t like to be told what to do,” Nielsen said. But he found that the covenants specified things like a six-foot tree in the front yard.

“Well, we will have this anyway,” the couple thought and began to see in the restrictions “the things we would have done automatically.

“The most important thing is it’s ours,” Nielsen said. “We want it to be a nice-looking neighborhood.”

Having just moved in, with no lawn in place and boxes in the garage, they haven’t made any firm plans for improvements. “A swingset, a sandbox in the back, a garden one of these days,” Nielsen mused.

But they see the office in the third bedroom disappearing as they expand their family. Bryan Nielsen imagines a small home office off the master bedroom perhaps in five to 10 years.

Will they stay?

“We’ve always had lofty dreams,” Nielsen said. “We have one plan as if we were rich and famous. But just in case, we have plans to stick around and grow roots and be happy where we are.”