Our Home
Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
We decided to look for a home in April of 2009. The housing market was in the crapper and there was this delightful little thing called the “First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit”. Enticing? I think yes.
We met our Realtor, Brian, on a Tuesday and handed over our “want to have in a house” list. There were 11 “wants” on the list.
Yeah, I know there are only 10 “wants” on this list. I lost the original list, and I can’t remember the 11th “want”. |
We planned to meet up with Brian that Saturday to look at houses. We looked at 8 houses that day. Some were good, some were bad, some made me want to immediately get back in the car the second I stepped inside.
The last house we saw was a tan/beige ranch. 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, vaulted ceilings in the great room and master bedroom, built in 2002, fenced-in yard (with a shed!), big kitchen (with a newly constructed island!), attached 2-car garage (that could fit both of our SUVs!), new carpet, new laminate in the kitchen and entryway, entire interior painted beige (I saw this as a clean slate), walk-in pantry, laundry room, large walk-in master closet, and within reach of our desired price. There wasn’t a basement or fireplace, but this house had 9 out of our 11 “wants” and more.
We made an offer the following Tuesday. After some back-and-forth with the owners, our offer was accepted on Thursday. So it took us 9 days. 9 days to meet our Realtor, find a house, make an offer, and have our offer accepted (for our desired price).
starting in the upper left going clockwise: great room, entryway, great room, master bath, walk-in pantry, my office |
We closed on the house in late June and moved in in early July. I spent the week before move-in day painting the kitchen, guest bathroom, master bathroom, and my office. But more on that later…
How long was your house hunting adventure? How many things were on your “want to have in a house” list? Did you look at a lot of houses before find the one?
that’s amazing that it happened so quickly! most of the time you hear horror stories about it taking so long and about nothing being the “right fit”!
i’m still in the “dream phase” of home buying which pretty much means i stare at houses ONLINE all the time but never actually go to see one in person. i guess i should make a “want list” and get things rolling!
Crazy!! That’s exciting it worked out so well for you!
We have built the 2 houses we lived in. The first one included very few of our wants but our current house is packed with them!
This all sounded very familiar until the “9 days” part. We spent a solid month looking before we found anything we wanted to bid on, and that ended up being short sale. We sat waiting for that for 5 months with the bank jacking us around, and finally decided to cancel our offer, and start over. We found a home we liked the third time we went looking after cancelling the other sale, but we were so sick of looking that we made a LOT of concessions on our original “must have list” It took a week and some haggling (i.e. us paying more) for the offer to be accepted and we closed almost two months later. It was a horrible experience that lasted from May until December, and we’re really regretting the concessions we made. Because we also got the tax credit we are stuck here for 3 years, and because the economy is in the crapper (houses in our neighborhood are now listed at 87K or less and STILL not selling) we’re fairly screwed when it comes to selling. I’m glad you didn’t have to settle on much and had a much better experience.
that’s crazy fast! i hope things work out when we buy a house (1-2 years, after i’m done with grad school). i’m so done with apartment living.
wow you got lucky! I looked and looked for like 4 months, at who knows how many!?!
So I have to comment. I found your blog through Bower Power. After reading your About Me and Our Home posts, I just had to comment about our similarities! My husband and I began dating in 2005. We bought our first home together at the end of June 2009, moved into our new home early July 2009, and were married in August of 2011 (just barely 6 years after we started dating). Too funny! Love your blog.