After almost half a year of house hunting/bidding, this finally comes to an end. The good news: We are now officially home owners. The bad news: We will be poor and probably in debt for the next 30 years. More bad news: We must try to find somebody take our apartment for the next 3 months, sigh :(
However, we are very, very excited that we were able to end this long and dreadful process. I like to go look at houses but really hate the waiting and back-and-forth signing an endless number of documents. We have seen over 20 houses and put in offers on 4 houses total, and finally got this one.
The first house was a short-sell and was such a steal, listed at $70/sqft. We waited for months, and the seller took a different offer regardless of us being first in line. It turned out they chose the other offer at $2,000 more than what we offered them. I guess that's how it goes with buying houses, you never know what you can get. Although we were mad that it didn't work out, I'm glad we didn't get it because we now got a decent deal for a much better house.
The second house was a bankown/foreclosure. It was a very pretty and spacious home: I remember the kitchen was granite with double oven and stainless steel appliances. We put on our offer almost $30,000 above the asking price and still didn't get it. At least we didn't have to wait for so long with that offer to get that rejection. We were sad for not being able to get it. It was a little too much house for us (3,500 sqft home, 3 car garage, .30 acre lot of backyard), and it would make our monthly payment about $1,000 more. It's good not to have bought that after all.
The third house was similar to the second house, but not as nice. However, it was very close to my in-laws. The seller was trying to sell the house to move in with their parents on the same street. They're LDS; that means if we moved in we would be in the same ward. How awkward would that be! Again, no regret for not getting this house.
We are truly blessed with this whole process. I'm so grateful that everything worked out for the best. Yes, I must admit we love our new home and can't wait to move in soon. Despite being a foreclosure from Fannie Mae, it is in great shape, much better than some of the houses that we've seen in the past that are seller occupied. No major fixing other than cleaning the carpet, repainting the room if we want to, some caulking for the bathtub, and replacing a couple of broken sprinkler heads.
The front view of my humble abode. Please ignore the dead looking lawn, the house hasn't been occupied for over a year. Let's see what I can do to turn that around. Tiny picture, I know... I cut it out of my appraisal docs, haha. Will post more pictures soon :)
The back view
The neighborhood
