Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Homeowners!

Yes, I know we have been homeowners for about 6 months now but I still have not written about how that blessing came to be. Here is our story....

Almost exactly 1 year ago we found out we were pregnant with #2. We were a bit surprised. :) At the time we were living in a 2 bedroom apartment (roughly 900 sq.ft.) and decided that we needed more space once baby #2 arrived. So the hunt began. We fell absolutely in love with the first house we looked at! It was everything we had wanted and more. You can imagine how sad we were when the very next day our real estate agent told us the bank had accepted an offer (it was a foreclosure). I cried, that's how disappointed I was. Looking back now, it would of been a lot of work and money 'cause it needed LOTS of work done to be livable. 

About 2 months go by and we hadn't found anything even worth looking at. At this point I was starting to get discouraged, because everything we had seen for sell was either too small or at the high end of our budget. I was also about halfway through my pregnancy and was starting to get worried that we wouldn't find a place before baby arrived. Then one day our agent calls and says she found a house that she thinks we'd be interested in. We met up with her and the owner's of the house that next weekend. When I first heard it was a duplex, I was kinda nervous. I had never imagined owning a rental property. But boy, am I glad our agent didn't let that stop her from showing us this house! We were very happy with what we saw but weren't ready to make an offer cause we needed to make sure the bank would give us a loan for that high. We had been pre-approved up to $250,000 and they were asking $279,00 for this duplex. While we were still working on getting the approval, the sellers received 3 offers. We didn't feel ready to put an offer in so we told our agent we would have to pass. The seller's for some unknown reason really liked us and told our agent that if the deal fell through they would let us know before they put it back on the market. Once again, we were disappointed but knew that God had a plan and was in control. 

Another month goes by. We had heard the duplex had sold so we kept looking around. Once again, didn't see much on the market that we could afford and was the right size for us. Then, one day Eli gets a phone call. Our agent tells him the original sell of the duplex fell through due to financing problems! So he and my dad went to take a second look (Eli wanted my dad's opinion) and did the math to see what our monthly payments would be and to make sure we could actually afford it. The numbers added up perfectly for us and we decided to go for it! 

We went to put in our offer the next day and found out that someone else had put in an offer about an hour or two before us (they listed the house on craigslist but not on MLS). Then came the hard part.... guessing how much the offer was and trying to outdo them with going over our budget. That was fun. We finally made our decision and put in the offer. The next day the seller's came back to us and asked us to put in our highest offer and they would let us know the next day. Eli and I talked it over and decided that we couldn't go any higher. We trusted that God was in control and would work through out the whole situation. We told them our decision and then went home to wait. Ugh! It seriously is so hard to be patient in a situation like this. 

The next day rolls around and I'm working, waiting to here from Eli. He finally calls (I think it was around 11-12 o'clock) and tells me that they accepted the other offer only to have that one fall through due to financing problems! And we were the only other offer so they accepted it!

The situation was just crazy! God certainly works in mysterious ways... we got the house because 2 offers fell through due to financing problems. 

Another cool thing that worked in our favor was the house inspection. The first "buyer" of the house got the inspection done before their financing fell through. It turns out that the guy who did the inspection was a friend of my parent's (they had recommended him to us) and so my mom called him and asked him his opinion of the house. And the sellers gave us a copy of his report. So we didn't have to pay for the inspection and wait for it to get done. It made the process speed up and allowed us to move into our house a month after putting in our offer! 

We are incredibly blessed to own this house!

In case you haven't heard/didn't realize, this house is a duplex. We live upstairs and rent out the bottom.  Once again, we are very blessed and have a great renter! 

Below are some pictures of the house right after we moved in. 


We love our yard! We own about 1/2 acre.


And we have a barn!