house house house!

Guess what? We finally have a permanent place to live.

Our tale begins over the summer. Our realtor showed me a house, but I was skeptical at first since I didn't think I liked the neighborhood. However, when I went inside, I really liked it. I decided we needed to bring Shane back so he could see it for himself. It was in our price range and really nice. The second time we went, I liked it even more. Then it dawned on me that, no, I LOVED it, I really wanted this house. It was four bedrooms on a nice cul-de-sac. Two full baths upstairs, an island in the kitchen, updated quartz countertops, a great kitchen pantry, etc. LOTS of great ergonomic things for the Mom of the family. I'd be happy.

I drove by the house a bunch of times and even found a neighbor to talk to! He pointed out all the houses on the street and said who had the best lawn, who was really quiet, who threw wild Mexican parties every so often, who had kids. He was the nicest guy.

The downsides were that the house backed up against a busy street, well, semi-busy. You could hear cars buzzing by in the backyard. Hmmm. Plus, we also knew the siding on the house was a junky kind, and we'd for sure need to replace it eventually. The neighbor talked about living next to the street and maintaining the siding, as well. Behind his house, in fact, was a bus stop! Talk about busy.

We were naive and aggressive at that point, and we thought the seller was asking too much. We did our research and found out she bought it at auction several months before and put a buncha money into it. Our stipulations at first, in this house-hunting journey, were that Shane never wanted to do any work ever. The house we were to buy had to cosmetically and physically be perfect in every. single. way. And, we had to get it for a rock-bottom price because it was a buyer's market, right?

We quickly learned our parameters were unrealistic. We bid on a bunch of houses and lost them all, because we just didn't know what was going on. So in the context of this house I loved, even though we thought that investor was charging too much, she was probably right on for the neighborhood and state of the home. The house was also a regular sale (not a foreclosure), which is a good thing. Houses that are regular sales go for a small premium since dealing with banks is a headache.

PLUS, we had not yet sold our condo yet. The cards were stacked against us... we weren't in the position to buy this house over the summer. I loved it, I really did, but it wasn't meant to be. By the time our condo had an offer, someone else had bought the house. The story was over.

Or was it?

Basically, I compare every house to that house. That was the one I wanted, the one that "got away." Shane teases me though, because yes, it had issues. Backing up to a busy street? Not cool. Crappy siding? Less cool.

Fast forward to October, when we got an offer on our condo. We moved into a rental home in November and the condo sale closed in December. YAY. House hunting in January was depressing. There was not a lot on the market. After a particularly disappointing real estate viewing, I demanded that Shane drive by that house I loved. I wanted to make sure someone actually lived there. Maybe no one did and it was really still for sale and we could magically buy it. I was delusional.

Or was I? ...

When we got there, sure enough a car was in the driveway and the lights were on. Boo. But what else did we see? Just across the street a For Sale sign was up. On the same exact house, just in another spot. You could see from the layout of the home that it was identical in every way to the house I had wanted. We called up our realtor to inquire. Why hadn't he sent us this house? What was the story?



Well. It wasn't for sale yet. The sign and keybox were up, but it wasn't officially listed yet. It was a foreclosure, a Fannie Mae property. I was super excited! I imagined it would be listed and we'd offer on it immediately and no one could beat us out (since that had happened to us several times before already. Seriously we've offered on like 10 places by now).

Our realtor came over and let us in. The place looked decent. The countertops hadn't been updated like the last house, the carpet was in decent shape but not pristine, and there were assorted other goofy quirks per its foreclosure status (dirty grouting, a few broken windows, etc.). It was manageable. We had changed our position through this real estate buying journey and realized that it would be OK to buy a house less updated cosmetically. Since I knew that was the new approach (that maybe one day we could put in our own granite countertops), I was pleased with what we saw. The house is in good shape, really.

And it didn't back up to the busy street! It was a better house by all definitions!

We were so giddy, we went to the house like THREE TIMES before it even went on the market. We went once, and once our realtor went and did a pre-inspection for us, taking pictures of the crawl space and stuff. Finally, we took my dad and father-in-law when they were all here for Laurel's blessing. Dad had ideas on how to fix a few drainage issues, plus he looked at the breaker box which is important (*wink*). Dad is a professional electrician so I won't worry about that kinda stuff. If he flies to Seattle and I make him install a few ceiling fans he can write the trip off as a business expense! Haha. Anyway, we were definitely interested. We took lots of pictures and exerted a good reconnaissance effort.

It came on the market Tuesday, February 7. We offered on Thursday, February 9. We were told there were multiple offers maybe the next day, and the bank would review all offers Monday, February 13. We upped our offer a little bit and resubmitted.

We were told Thursday, February 16 that we didn't get it. I won't lie, I shed a tear. Our realtor said he really thought this was the one for us and was surprised. We had submitted a good offer. Sigh.

We found another house to consider, and it was OK. Woulda been a great house. We were considering it seriously, when we got another call from our realtor -- Tuesday, February 21 (like 2 weeks later by this point). Imagine my elation when he said negotiations with the first buyers of the house fell through, and the bank was extending the home to us! It was ours if we wanted it! GAH! OF COURSE I WANTED IT! We did a few rounds of negotiations, and had mutual acceptance by the end of the week. Not bad!

Our inspection was Monday, February 27. We were nervous. Really nervous. Justifiably so. In the first 20 minutes we learned the roof was completely shot and the siding needed to be replaced ASAP. Sheesh. Our inspector has a way of scaring the pants off of us (we have walked away from three houses before this one). The rest of the inspection was similarly daunting, but not too bad. The crawl space was pretty clean but a little moist in one spot, there are definitely some drainage issues outside making the yard soggy, the furnace needs to be serviced, etc.

Our initial thought was to walk away, again... but I basically said to my husband: Look, hon. If it's not this one, our only option is new construction. I'm not walking away from a house because of the inspection ever again.

So, we took a week and got bids to fix the issues (to see how bad it was) and went to view new construction homes. Surprisingly, the bids were not as high as we thought they'd be, and the new homes weren't as glamorous as we thought they'd be. Well, some of them were glamorous, but they were also $50k more in price.

We asked the bank for some concessions -- give us money off the purchase price or fix some things. It was obvious (from our realtor talking to their realtor) that the bank knew about some of these problems, like the roof. They offered to fix some things, but their offer was sorta lousy and we didn't want to go for it. Our realtor kept pushing for money back. In the end, we got a bit of money off the purchase price (yay!), but we decided to just take the house as is and fix everything ourselves. We knew some of these things might be issues, so we worked the cost into our offer, but we're nervous about paying for all the things now. We may be house-poor for awhile until we build our savings back up.

We finally decided March 5 -- almost an entire month after we offered on the house -- to go full speed ahead. Closing date is March 27. After that we'll clean the crawl space, clean the carpets, re-grout the bathrooms, and move in. Maybe April 7, the weekend of Easter? BIG NEWS.

Dealing with the bank has been... oy. But whatever! We got a good interest rate locked in, escrow has been opened, and things are progressing. We're moving!

The little cul-de-sac is great. The schools are incredible; I'm really pleased with the location to the freeways, our friends, and the places we're already used to going. It's technically the City of Edmonds, which is a little odd. It's in a new ward, so I'll make some new friends (and go back to afternoon Church!! ArgH!) I already know a handful of people in the ward, so it should be an easy transition. Our wards meet in the same building, even.

In short, wow. I'm so thrilled. I LOVE this house. I've already decided what goes in what room and what colors I want to paint some of the walls. I know things won't be perfect, and there will probably be things I want to change that we can't afford to do, but I can be patient. We want to be here for awhile! I'm really eager to meet the neighbors (see if that neighbor from the summer remembers me!!), and get settled in. And use all MY STUFF AGAIN!! (which has been sitting in boxes in the garage here).

Yay! Wish us happy financing!