Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, August 20, 2007:
New House
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.
Amongst everything else going on last week we moved to a new home from our condo. The condo was really getting tight with the baby, the business, etc. My uncle is a home builder and was able to sell us this house at the “family discount” which was really generous of him. It’s a really nice home, it even has a view of the Hudson River. Here’s a few pics. It’s a little barren still, but we’re working on it.
Front:
Entry:
Office (still waiting for my bookcases, can you tell!):
This was actually a formal living room, but what the heck do you need 2 living rooms for? So we added the doors and made it into the office. It’s going to be nice to have the extra space.
Kitchen:
Great room (my uncle didn’t want his pool table, so we’ve put it to use 
):
Family room:
This might be my favorite room. It’s so nice to finally have a place where we can sit down and not worry about what the baby is touching or getting into.
Discussion
Whoa. That's huge. It looks awesome!
JD
Created by JD on 08.20.2007 8:05 pm
Yeah, it's pretty big. We wouldn't actually have wanted something this big, but the house was already built and the family discount only came on this one
Created by Ian on 08.20.2007 8:13 pm
Looks nice. I know what you mean about the family room -- our second kid just started crawling this week and she has already earned the nickname "Danger Girl".
Created by Doug Martin on 08.20.2007 8:48 pm
Looks great Ian. Congrats!
Created by Scott Meade on 08.20.2007 11:50 pm
Hey ! A new baby and a new house in so little time !! I also changed house in last May ... and I'm already full of boxes around the rooms !
Good luck !
Gian Luca
Created by Gian Luca Farina Perseu on 08.21.2007 2:40 am
Helpspot must be selling well. I don't what that house would cost in the US, but I would guess it would be at least a million pounds (2 million dollars) here in the South East of England. We could with more space now we have a youngster. I'm trying not to go green with envy...
Created by andybrice on 08.21.2007 7:03 am
Congrats on the new house! Looks nice... and having a space for a home office is sweet.
Created by Eric Burdo on 08.21.2007 8:14 am
Thanks guys!
Definitely less than 2 million Andy! In NY's Westchester county just above NYC it would certainly go for that much or more, but 2 hours north of NYC where we live it's well under a million especially in the currently bad real estate market. It wasn't cheap though and without the previously mentioned family discount we probably wouldn't have purchased it.
I do think of it as the house that HelpSpot built as we certainly wouldn't be living here if it wasn't for HS. We do have a mortgage though, it's not all paid off :-(. Maybe someday.
Created by Ian on 08.21.2007 8:20 am
Weird - the captcha I had to enter for this comment was "house34" The planets must be aligning.
Congratulations, Ian. This is really cool.
Created by Starr on 08.21.2007 9:12 am
Looks great Ian. You have some really nice stuff too. I hope you're happy there.
Created by eddy on 08.21.2007 10:03 am
Congrats Ian! I know all about moving having done so 3 weeks ago, so I'm pretty sure you are also dragging yourself through unpacking and settling. I'd forgotten how much it throws off the norm moving both a house and office!
Created by Mike Rohde on 08.21.2007 10:05 am
Congrats Ian! My wife and I are closing on the house we're building the middle of next month and we're glad to be getting out of our apartment!
I guess you could say that HelpSpot is helping out with our house, too...but much more indirectly. I bought HelpSpot for our helpdesk, which I now use to support our staff, helping me do my job which I get paid for, which then will pay my mortgage. Not quite the same thing...your house is being supported much more directly by my purchase 
But who knew helpdesk software could have so much of a connection to housing?!
Created by David Szpunar on 08.21.2007 11:23 am
Heh. This could be a good game, how many degrees from HelpSpot is your house?
Congrats on the house. We thought of building one, but we're too anal on details and it would drive us nuts for months and I'd never get any work done. This house is pretty much new (2.5 years old) and basically unlived in so we figured that's close enough.
Created by Ian on 08.21.2007 11:26 am
Actually David, perhaps you should be taking credit for part of my house. For instance your HelpSpot install is probably the garage door or perhaps several windows . We could put little labels on each part of the house: "sponsored by ....."
Created by Ian on 08.21.2007 11:28 am
Well, I did say "your house is being supported much more directly by my purchase" which is the same idea, but if you want to put a "Sponsored by Lakeview Church" label somewhere (hey, the more visible the better for me I certainly won't say no :-D Could you include our web address?
Thanks for the congrats-back (kind of like a trackback??). We looked at about 15-20 houses before deciding to build, and that was because it was cheaper to build than buy in the same neighborhood right now, and we got to pick out some stuff rather than living with someone else's choices. But it's a pre-set design from a mainstream builder, so our choices consisted of visiting their design center in town and picking stuff (flooring, counters, limited paint and bathroom colors, appliance upgrades, cabinet upgrades, etc.) from their preset choices and we had to finalize them by a certain date. We get to change the paint--after we close. So I understand the details of picking stuff out, but we ended up pretty limited and would have had to go with a custom builder (and spend a ton more money) to pick out more stuff. A friend of ours just finished doing this...very nice house but--more money and a lot more work and choices along the way!
I think you got a pretty good deal, not having to build (not that I disliked the building process) but getting a new house...the "formal" living room was quite funny to me though, I'd make it an office too! That's what I'm going to do with our fourth bedroom. Wood floors, river view, looks like decent land too...very nice! And the kitchen/TV/family room are nothing to sneeze at either!
RE: Andy's comment about European prices; it reminds me of visitors we had here recently from the Netherlands who were also very impressed with our house and its price. They are in an apartment in Holland but it costs more than our apartment here for one tiny attic room, while we have just under 1000 sq. ft. Yes they get state-sponsored healthcare but they take home about 20-30% of their pay after taxes, too. And houses there are all built with stone and take longer to build because of it, vs. wood frames here (our house took about three months or less for the majority of the work starting from framing). But storms in Holland don't do much damage to their housing!
Created by David Szpunar on 08.21.2007 11:42 am
the house that helpspot built 
Created by pete on 08.21.2007 5:27 pm
Wow that's an awesome house! So huge!
Congrats Ian!
Created by Alex Williams on 08.21.2007 10:07 pm
Congratulations! I wish I could have a nice house like yours. You are giving microISVs a new hope to work on... :D
Created by Fred on 08.21.2007 10:55 pm
Thanks guys.
Created by Ian on 08.21.2007 11:10 pm
Congratulations Ian, that's a beautiful home!
Created by Nate Kohari on 08.22.2007 8:05 am
I just want to know if your Uncle included the kid in the stairs pictures as part of the "family discount"?
Congrats and nice house!
Created by Brandon on 08.22.2007 10:32 am
Thanks. Nope the kid is mine! Probably didn't hurt with the discount though
Created by Ian on 08.22.2007 10:45 am
Hi Ian,
Congratulations on the new house! It looks great! You deserve it!
Created by Stephane Grenier on 08.22.2007 2:26 pm
Congratulations! You should be proud, it's a big change from this post: http://www.userscape.com/blog/index.php/site/comments/are_you_serious_about_starting_a_business/ . And it only took two years!
Created by Phil on 08.24.2007 8:05 am
You really have been reading this blog a long time Phil!!
Yeah, it is a long way from that. You can even see the replacement SUV in the first pictures above. A Pilot we got when our son was born so we could haul all the stuff you need for a baby.
Sometimes it feels like forever ago that this all started, but it really has only been a couple of years. Amazing.
Created by Ian on 08.24.2007 8:11 am
Ian, congratulations!
Thanks for the post. It's really inspiring!
Created by Alex Kolesnichenko on 08.28.2007 7:36 pm
This is AWESOME, guys. Congrats!!
The family room is really nice- yeah, it's great when the kids have space they can roam around freely in and you don't have to worry about them getting into stuff they shouldn't...and what a sweet pool table.
Hey, with all this space, your little guy will soon be needing some brothers and sisters to play with...
Created by Terry Baron on 08.31.2007 1:44 pm
Thanks Terry. I think I need another year or so to catch up on sleep before round 2
Created by Ian on 08.31.2007 1:54 pm
Congrats!
My success with MicroISV is much more modest; nevertheless I'm going to take a big chunk of earned money and buy a first car!
Created by Max Ischenko on 09.03.2007 7:47 am