Brad's loving his job, and we're all loving the area. Our apartment lease ends the last day of October. So we decided we make things here more permanent. We started looking at homes online back in June. Mostly I just looked at specs and pictures, did research on neighborhoods (crime rates, checking sex offender lists, school districts, tax rates, etc), and created an excel spreadsheet of all the info for each house that I wanted to see. (address, asking price, forclosure?, price we're willing to pay, estimated value, beds, baths, year built, amenities, pros, cons, work needed, a rating 1-4 based on what we thought before we saw the house in person and after, and the school district it was in). I showed it to Brad to make sure we were on the same page for what we wanted. Then near the end of July, we contacted our buyers agent to go look at the list of houses I compiled.
We went on a Saturday to look at 8 of the houses, but time ran out and we only saw 6. Of those, we liked 3 (really, we kinda liked 2 and LOVED 1). The agent ran comparable sales on those 3 and arranged for us to visit 8 more homes on the following Wednesday. Of the houses we saw on Wednesday, we kinda liked 2. The rest were a bust, though one of them- while a nightmare of wallpaper and architecture- did make us laugh A LOT! (about mid-way down the stairs to the basement was a little door... we opened it to find a little "half bath" the size of an airplane lavatory... it might have been smaller than an airplane lavatory. we about died laughing.)
When comparable sales came back, of the 4 we kinda liked, the asking price was way inflated. We knew it would be a fight to get a loan that the sellers would accept and the bank would approve. But on our dream house, the house we LOVED.... the asking price was below comparable sales without even considering the amenities-- like the fully applianced kitchen! Only drawback was the asking price was at the very top end of our price range... We decided to put in an aggressive and low offer since no one else had put in an offer yet and it had been on the market for awhile (though we both agreed we'd be willing to pay asking price if it came down to it, since it was still such a great investment at asking price). The next morning we got a call that someone else put in an offer that morning, so we had to give our best and final offer. UGH! We decided to do asking price-- a price that really was our best offer, but if it didn't get accepted, we could walk away knowing it was our best offer with no regrets.
We got a call the next morning saying-- WE GOT THE HOUSE!!!
I was stunned. I spent the next 24 hours riding an emotional roller coaster... rapidly shifting from, "Oh my goodness! We are getting our dream house! YAY!" to "What?! We're getting a house?! Are we crazy? Will I be able to keep it clean? Is this really the house we want? Did we just make a mistake?!" But after lots of prayer and re-writing our budget and writing a cleaning schedule, we're both super excited and happy!
This house is perfect for us- now and for the next 30+ years. I told Brad after we saw it the first time-- I could see us growing old in this house. raising our kids here. Inviting friends over; holding youth activities here (since Brad is the Young Men's President in our ward). Our kids bringing their friends over after school and hanging out in the basement. Our kids coming home for the holidays and bringing grandkids to visit. We both want to have a house that can be the "safe house" for our kids and their friends, and this house could be just that. We're so happy that we could find a house that perfectly fits our family and our long-term family goals so early in life. We feel incredibly blessed!
I'm going to wait to post pictures until after closing (which we expect to be sometime in early to mid October). And once we get moved in and mostly unpacked, we'll throw a house warming party! :-)
PS-- we're looking for moving boxes! All donations accepted. :-)
PPS-- we will accept offers to help clean (both the apartment we are moving out of, and the house we're moving into-- there's some spiders that need to be evicted from the basement before we move in since the house has been empty for awhile.)
Ok, I'l give you one picture-- it's of the front-outside of the house from the website we first saw it posted on.
I am so ridiculously excited!
