Well it finally happened! After living for the last 13 years in a small 1 bedroom apartment, we found a cute little 2 bedroom 1 bath house, with a fantastic yard, a garage for Rob, front porch, back deck with a hot tub for me, and all appliances (except washer/dryer) and put an offer in and guess what...it was accepted!!! Well, it didn't happen at all like it sounds. If you want to hear about it, keep reading.
This whole thing was such a learning experience and leap of faith for both of us. First, we had to look at lots of houses before we found this one. Most of them online. Actually, we looked at hundreds of houses. Plus most of the time we didn't think we could ever afford one. But then, after we went through almost 5 years of faithfully paying off all our credit cards, saving when we could, not taking vacations, and living off very little, we came to a point when it seemed like it just may be a possibility. Then interest rates started to drop, and so did housing prices, and it really seemed possible. Then we found out, through our credit counseling program, about a class we could go to that would qualify us for down payment assistance and then it really started to look promising. That class is where we met our Mortgage Advisior, Mia, who is why we are able to buy this home. She encouraged us to try and we took her advice to heart.
Then more incentive came through the $8000 tax credit, but actually we weren't too thrilled about it at first and here's why. It basically caused every Tom, Dick & Harry to enter the first time buyers market which already didn't have a lot of houses available anyway, not in our neck of the woods. Also the down payment assistance programs which had also received stimulus funds, were starting to flooded with applications. (Our own DPA ran out of funds just yesterday and we had to go with a back up State run agency.) I guess that's what the Feds wanted..to stimulate the housing market..and it sure did around here.
Well anyway, then we met Jen, a really honest and forthright young woman, who became our agent, and then it happened... we found this home. But, it turned out to be a short sale. What's a short sale? Well it means the seller is selling the house for less than he owes the lender. There is alot of homes like that right now on the market due to the housing market bubble bursting and many homes lost value starting in 2007. our seller was a nice man, who had lost his wife and was being laid off from his job. He really wanted to sell to avoid foreclosure and we wanted to help. Well, we had been praying for some time about finding a home and we just wanted to glorify God and trust Him so we stepped out in faith. We made the offer and the seller accepted.
That was back on April 9th. So let's fast forward 3 months to now. So yesterday, we found out the seller's lender will let him sell us the house for our agreed amount including some closing costs. Yeah!!! Aren't you happy for us! We hope so.
So that brings us to the present. What's next you ask? Well, now starts the actual process that normal home sales go through...appraisal, inspection, title searches, underwriting our mortgage, closing and so on, until our closing day which is set for August 28, 2009. That's the official day that we get the keys, but a few days before, we actually give all the money. In our state you don't get the keys for a couple of days so that everything can be funded and filed with the powers that be.
So there it is! We can hardly believe it, so I'm sure if you know us at all, you probably are the same! We started this blog mainly to document the process till closing and the initial move. Some of you may not have known at all that we were going through all this. Sorry for that, but everything was so iffy at times, we just wanted to keep it to ourselves till we knew we could actually get under contract. And since now we are, we wanted to share our good news with all of our family and friends. Please be praying for us. Your prayers are the means God uses to give us wisdom and discernment when making these decisions.
Please enjoy the movie above, that we made of the photos of the house. If you want to see the photos instead of movie you can click here to go to our photo album or scroll to the bottom of this page. These pics were taken for the listing and are all we have currently. When we get more, we will be sure to post them. Love, L&R
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