I live in a new house that my DH and I built (well, it is now 8 years old) and we have had some problems with it and we made some mistakes that are not correctable when building it. When we built the house, I didn't realize how small the back yard would be because we are in a new subdivision and none of the surrounding houses were built yet. A friend of mine invited us to swim at the house of an elderly lady friend of hers once and I just drooled over her lot. It was a cul de sac 1.25 acre lot and the house was built in the 50's. It is dated. For the first time, it is for sale now. Ideally, I would love to buy the lot and built a new house but we just can't afford it. We could probably buy the house and either A) live in a while and wait a few years and maybe build or B) remodel. I haven't seen the interior yet but it looks like a good layout. Just dated. It got me to wondering. What would you choose? New house with tiny backyard (and we do have kids) or older home with gorgeous private lot?