It's official. After 8 months of living with Andrew's mom, working harder than we have ever worked, saving every penny possible, searching and prayer through frustrations and disappointments, we finally own our own home. In May of last year we made one of the scariest and most uncertain decisions we ever made. We chose to not sign another lease with our apartment, move in with Andrew's mom, and start the uncertain and terrifying journey of buying a house. Our apartment had a huge mold problem and with a landlord who didn't seem to care much, we knew we had to get out of there. We also knew we would love to buy our own house, but we weren't sure if we would even be able to or how to go about it. We packed up our things, put most of it in a storage unit, and moved in with Andrew's Mom. She was so generous to let us live there. I know it probably wasn't the easiest thing for her to do. In order to prevent us from living with Andrew's mom forever, we set a date. February 1, 2014. That was the date we absolutely had to be in our own place. If it wasn't our own home, it had to be an apartment or town home.
The next 8 months were crazy. We met with financial advisors, lenders, and realtors. We thought about the option to build or to buy something that already existed and if we did that, did we do brand new, something older but move-in ready, or did we buy something we would need to put money and energy into to fix up. We budgeted and saved as much as we possibly could. We looked at houses online all the time. We knew how much we wanted to have as our down payment and we knew our budget for the home. Looking at how much we would need saved as our down payment, closing costs, etc. scared me. It was a huge number and I felt so discouraged feeling as though we would never have that money saved. We made the decision to pay off my car completely so instead of having three debts, car, student loans, and a mortgage, we would just have the student loans and mortgage. We saved and saved and handed over a huge chunk of money and paid of my car. A couple weeks later, we had a set-back. We had to buy Andrew a new
car and therefore brought back the third debt. It was frustrating and discouraging. I began to feel as though we would never buy. Our date of February 1 was quickly approaching. We prayed and prayed to know what Heavenly Father's plan was. We both felt very strongly that we were supposed to buy, but it felt like it would never happen.
In November, we saw a house we liked but still didn't have our down payment saved up so we just saved it to our "favorites" list and moved on. On December 1st, there was an open house. We chose to head over right after church and check it out. It was a beautiful home and fell within our price range. There were things we didn't like about it and knew it wasn't "our home". A week later, on December 8th, we decided to pull up the listings online and see if there were anymore open houses that day. A house popped up that we had never seen before. It was an older home with a huge property. Andrew loved it, and I hated it. Andrew wanted so badly to go and see it but I didn't like it so I felt it would be a waste of time. As I thought about it throughout the rest of church, I changed my mind. I still didn't like the house but felt we should give it a shot. When we pulled up, my jaw hit the floor. The pictures definitely did not do justice. The house was beautiful and I suddenly felt so excited to go inside. The inside was amazing. The house was built in 1969 but the previous owners did so many upgrades to make it more modern and updated. At one point, Andrew and I looked at each other and knew it was "our home". We felt overwhelmed by the thought of this. We immediately contacted our realtor and she got us the necessary information to proceed with this. She cautioned us that this house would go fast (it had only been on the market since 10p.m. on the 6th and already had many inquiries). We prayed about it throughout the week and knew we wanted to put and offer. We went in Thursday night after Andrew got off work and started paperwork. We put in an offer and would hear back the next day. It was the longest 12 hours of our life. We felt as though we had put in a fair offer. They came back with a counter offer that we weren't happy about. The house was already listed at the high end of what we wanted to pay so if we came back and countered their counter offer, we would be paying even more than we wanted to. I didn't feel good about it one bit, and that scared me. This house was perfect: move-in ready, huge backyard, room to entertain, and room for our family to grow. We had only seen it once and so I wanted to see it again before making any further decisions. We went back on Sunday the 15th with just our realtor to look at the house. We spent about an hour moving through the house as though we were living there and inspecting every inch of the home. Again, we knew it was "our home". We didn't want to leave. We knew we had to make a counter offer. We signed the papers again and began the waiting process again. I had to work that night and it was the longest night ever. Monday morning, we got the call. They accepted our offer and the house was ours! We set our closing date - January 31st, 2014, one day before our original goal. It was perfect.
The next 6 weeks were full of signing papers, making sure our funds were in order, and preparing for the big move. We were so excited. We had the dreaded "signing day" on January 28th, and got the keys to OUR HOME on January 31st.
February 1st was moving day. We had so much help from both of our families and everything went smoothly. The weather was perfect and although we were exhausted at the end of the day, we had a great day and were officially living in our home.
Once I have pictures on the walls and a few more things settled in the house I will post pictures of the inside. We love our home and can't wait to see what life will bring us in this home!
