I guess technically I should write "we are buying a house..." But everything is near complete, all our ducks are in a row, and now we play the waiting game...
Here, let me back up a little bit:
So you all know that Jordy started his new job as a teller at 1st Choice Savings back in November. Well obviously he did not go to school for 4 years to be a teller. We were both hoping for a better position to come along. What we didn't expect was for it to happen so soon! After working there for 4 months, Jordy got a new job as an FSO - or Financial Service Officer at the call center for the same bank. It comes with full time hours, a nice big raise and more days off. We were stoked! Now we've been dreaming about buying our own home for a while now. We were tired of paying rent, and seemingly just throwing the money away instead of investing it into something that was ours. SO we had hoped that by saving a lot, we could afford a house maybe Fall of 2011 possibly Spring of 2012. Keep in mind we were not expecting his new job so soon...
Now come to just about a month ago and we find out that Jordy gets a nice raise with this position, I get a raise at my work (with promises of raises to come this summer) and bang - we are suddenly in the running for getting approved for a mortgage... YAY!
HOUSE HUNTING
Well we really didn't spend long in this department. We've been keeping an eye on the market here in Lethbridge for the past few months and finally something in our price range caught our eye. A cute little fixer-upper for $237,500.00 listing price. Well we called up a friend of ours from church who is a realtor and went to go see the house. We loved the layout!!! It had so much character in the exposed beams and open floor plan of the upstairs, and we already had plans for renovating the down stairs! We fell in love with the possibilities of the place - oh and HUGE backyard! We decided to put an offer in. We decided that with the comparables we had also gone to see, $220,000 would be a pretty good starting offer. Well the seller only countered at $232,500 only coming down $4,000. We were bummed! Well Mark, our realtor, told us that the house wasn't worth $237,000 and we felt it had a lot of renos to do, so we only came up to $225,000. No dice. The seller only came down to $232,000 and was pretty solidly stuck there. We were talking about countering again when Mark calls us up and told us that before we counter, we need to see this other place that had just come back on the market that day. So off we go.
SECOND HOUSE
We walked into the house and thought "We can't afford this..." "Mark is crazy!" The entire house has been renovated already with nice laminate floors and modern white base boards and tiled kitchen. The paint is even nice enough to stay! We go downstairs and there is some room for renos, but its even got a second brand new half bath downstairs. We loved it. It had all the room of the first house but without the need to do the renovations. It was move in ready! It has 3 bedrooms up and 1 bedroom down. Full bath upstairs with a bathtub and half bath downstairs with room for making it a full bath. The storage room in the basement was the size of a bedroom! So much room for food storage! The back yard is big enough to add a garage and still have a large backyard for future kidlets. Like I said, we thought it was too good to be true. But the listing price was only $235,000.00! We jumped on it and put an offer in of $227,000
Unfortunately we got into a bidding war...
We found out that there was a second offer on the table with a 3rd offer coming on the same night! I was devastated... I did not want to be in a bidding war, but I didn't want to lose the house! We decided we would go back at full price and hopefully get the house over the other bids since we had no idea what their offers were.
They accepted our offer of $235,000!
So we arranged for a home inspection and started to set up financing.
The home inspection went great - the only things that came up were things we already knew or suspected. New roof in the next year, new furnace and water tank in the next 5 years. Being a 38 year old house, we could deal with that. Especially when the price was already with a new roof in mind. Everything else checked out great. No water, or other leaks, no problematic cracks or anything.
FINANCING
We were approved for the amount of the mortgage. It went so quickly I thought it was still to good to be true. Where was the glitch?!
CREDIT CHECK
My credit check came back bad. Which was ridiculous. I had 100% good credit as far as I knew. It turns out that my Alberta Student Loans had put a collection on my account for failure to pay. I was ticked! We had paid off my little AB student loan in January! It turns out that there was a "clerical error" by AB SL and they didn't recognize the payment. So I had to call and get angry at them, again and again and again. Then get my lawyer to send them a letter, then call them again before they would fax us a letter to meet our financing conditions date - the day before the deadliine!!! It was soo stressful especially since it wasn't my fault! It was their error that put the collection on my credit report. It made for a very stressful week!
EVERYTHING IS APPROVED
Well - after that very stressful happenstance, we are finally able to remove the financing and home inspection conditions and move the sale forward!
We are super excited to move into our house. The possession date is May 30 which still seems sooo far away. BUT we love the house, we're excited to grow into it over the years and we're glad that we don't HAVE to do any renovations right away... not that we'd have money to!
We've stayed in our price range and we will not be house-poor. That was very important to us as we like our lifestyle and we look forward to having kids and going on trips and vacations still. I didn't want to sacrifice me being a stay-at-home mom or spending time with my husband just so we could own a house.
Anyways, that has been our excitement for the last few weeks and I'll post a few of the pictures from their listing page. (the pictures really don't do it justice) I wish we had possession already and could take our own pictures for you but oh well. There will be lots of pictures to come.
We've already bought a new couch, love-seat, and chair set for the upstairs living room... I'm already dreaming of decorating it! :) Here are the pictures:
Outside Front
Upstairs Living Room
Kitchen - Professionally tiled!
An actual Dining Room - you would not believe how few houses in this price range have a dining room!
Sorry its the wrong way - But the bathroom was soo cute, plus they are putting in a new sink before we move in. (it needs a new shower curtain though... eww...)
Master bedroom - This is the only bedroom they show a picture of online. There are two more upstairs and one down. All with nice size closets!
And my favourite part - the huge backyard with nice trees!!
There is so much we are excited about with this house... I think the biggest part is just to be homeowners! Hopefully the next 8 weeks will go by quickly and then we'll be moving in and I'll be posting more pictures!
