Sign, sealed, delivered! I'm yours!

Today was a very hard and long day. Just to give you a brief run down: On the way to sign papers today, I was on the freeway when ran over some plastic piece that fell off the truck driving in front of me. I think it tore the oil pan open so I called a tow truck to take my car to the shop, and a nice highway patrolman gave me a ride to the local Enterprise. And then, soon after that debacle (and lots of $$) we found out the down payment for the house was going to be more that what we thought it would be (a lot more). Andrew is out of town working, so I signed all the papers for him by proxy, and there were so many papers to sign, I believe he owes me a massage. Anyway, to make a long story short ("too late!"), it all worked out. 

And at the end of it all I still see this as a pretty great day because the fact remained that we now own the house! (Almost- I mean, now all that's left is for the other seller party to sign papers, money to go through, and have the keys handed to us.) 

But it's ours! And it feels so good! 

Yay! 

*celebratory sonic shake!*  

a long time coming

We just had a pretty frustrating, and at times discouraging, couple of days.

We found out that there was an outstanding judgment on Andrew's credit has been paid for (a long time ago) & should have been settled years ago.

And that's not even the frustrating part....

When we went back to the agency who needed to filed the official "Satisfaction of Judgement" to the court was when things got interesting.
To sum up, they weren't willing to do what they needed to take care of the situation, and acted like we didn't even know what we were talking about.
But....they finally got it all taken care of (only after some forceful encouragement on our part.....).

*big sigh of relief*

I'm just glad that is finally all taken care of.

Now we can enjoy our late night viewing of Divergent with family!



Note: I'm not trying to be cryptic or anything, but any more information and you would be annoyed of reading this (maybe you are already...) & there's really no need for me to emotionally relive it! 

Love at first sight!

So, not only did we love this house the first time we saw it, it was also the first house we even looked at!

I know.... It only added to my unsurety & anxiety about buying a house! Although, I had been browsing many many houses online for a few days before we went out looking, so I knew pretty well what I wanted and weeded out all the "NOs" ahead of time! And that was awfully helpful!

When we first walked through the house, the things I loved most about it were: the beautiful wood built-ins, the front door, the big window that faces the porch, the spacious feeling of the living room, kitchen & even the basement, the idea of finishing the basement!

The things I was most unsure about:  the basement ceiling was so low,

In the beginning....

Everything about buying this house has happened so very fast. 

I can almost pin point the moment we decided to just go for it, but only barley; it flew so fast it's practically all a blur. 

We have been renting houses/apartments for the past 4.5 years. Renting definitely has its pros and cons, but we were starting to run out of appreciation for all the pros of renting....Instead, we were tired of feeling like we were just throwing away money every month, when we could be investing it into our own property. And we were tired of not having any control over the place we lived: having to ask permission/not being able to: hang pictures, cut back a tree, paint walls, change the lighting, and even to have a pet cat, etc. etc.

So it was almost an impulse of "Can we do it?" "Yeah, let's do it!" In a matter of days we found a great lending company & Realtor, both recommended by Andrew's sister and set up appointments to meet with them. 

We met with Stephanie, the Lender, and she gave us great news off the bat. We knew we were in a good position to buy and  just meeting with her made our goal to buy a house so much more real! We had a real idea of what money we need for a down payment, and other things we needed to make this happen! 

I started scouring the Zillow for houses that were currently for sale, finding the few gems that I thought were worth taking a look at!  

When we first met with our realtor, Joe, he helped us to visualize & also qualify the specifics of what we really wanted in a house, and of those wants/needs, which were the priorities. This was extremely helpful! Mostly because Andrew & I were able to express our priorities to each other so that we knew what was important to ourselves, and each other. This was so helpful even when looking at houses online (you know, the weeding out process.) 

He then took us to view the first house on our view list; the house that would soon become our home. 

Appraisal

So we just heard about the appraisal on the house. It came back valued $9000 less than our agreed offer.

This could be good or bad. Good because if it all works out, we will be buying the house for $9000 cheaper, and who doesn't want that?! Although, it could be bad news if the sellers don't agree to the counter offer, and then we won't be able to buy the house at all! (Hopefully they will sign, because it is in their best interest. They have to use this appraisal for the next 3-4 months anyway!)

We have counter offered to the seller at the appraisal value and are just waiting for them to agree.

Waiting....waiting....