We first talked about buying the home we are in - My grandparents. It's a great size, just needs some updating. it's an awesome price for our budget - but it's not in the right location. So we dismissed it.
Then we saw one we liked and my friend & I went to take a look at it - awesome backyard, great deck, perfect location. the door was open so we walked in it for a while and thought this would be an awesome house! so we called our realtor at 8am Monday morning to find out that they just accepted an offer on it... bummer, so we lost house #1.
later we schedule a day to go look at houses with our realtor and we looked at about 6 of them... each one more disgusting than the previous one. Smokers in all of them, trash, pets, cat pee. Gross. the last one of the day was very clean and very nice but a bit too small. but we had considered it - but they already had an offer on the table - good-bye house #2.
So, distraught, thinking we'd never find a house that was 1. in the right location 2. that wasn't a totall disaster and 3. was in our price range. We found a lot of houses that could've been in 2 of the 3 categories but not all three.
we did drive by a "for sale by owner" on that day and left a message but we never followed up with it - we didn't know the price or # of bedrooms
So we started trying to see other houses that we found online and came across a few... and 2 of them had offers on them before we could even look at them.... seriously, 4 houses get offers before we could get a chance at buying them? I thought this was a buyers market?
Feeling very discouraged, we figured this must be God's way of telling us something. So we kept reconsidering our grandparents house. but we had two more houses we wanted to look at.
One was good, had lots of potential to be a good fit for us but needed a little bit of work - including 19 new windows. Okay, so more than a little bit of work. The 2nd one was perfect, way underpriced due to impending forclosure, 4 bedrooms - perfect. It needed paint and new carpet - but great - so we made an offer, they countered, and we countered back... and they sold it to someone else for more than what we countered for. I was really upset b/c I would've paid that price... but we were working with a bank & they could do whatever they wanted, I guess. Bye-bye House #5
I was very upset... feeling stupid for putting in too low an offer, feeling frustrated b/c this was the last chance, deciding what to do now - still not wanting to make the move on our current house b/c it's too far a way.... Cindy took the news much better - convinced that God had something better out there for us. But I just kept thinking that there are no more houses - except one.
I still had that number on my phone of the for sale by owner house I never followed up on. So out of pure frustration I just called it on the way home and listened to the message explaining the house.... clearly this was out of our price range. Vaulted ceilings, 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, oversized garage, attic fan.... but it's for sale by owner... more room to negotiate with I guess, so I left a message anyway.
he called back and as we talked we realized that the owner was a deacon at my new church! We also realized that they just found the house they wanted to offer on and move into. We also realized that they were about 2 hours from calling a realtor to list it with them. later we found out that of all the 3 previous owners, each owner had been a member at our church - crazy
cindy & I went over that night to see it and fell in love - it had everything in it already that we wanted to do to other houses we've seen. A house we could raise our kids in for the next 10+ years. we talked about it and figured our very top of our budget and made the best offer we could - still about $5,000 lower than their lowest... but they took it!
So we got all the paperwork together, signed the contracts and now we are in the process to close on the house october 4th.
After all of that we feel so lucky, so blessed. God has continued to take care of us in ways we never even expected!
So we are almost done with all this craziness of transitioning - just have to close on our house and move in!
In the meantime, we are just about done seeing everyone we haven't seen yet, so our weeks are starting to calm down a little. here's some shots from recently:
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