So we bought a house in April.
Unfortunately, I have a lack of pictures to show. But I thought I would share our journey of home buying and what we have gotten ourselves into.
After 1 1/2 years of living over the worst kind of people (pot smoking, loud, obnoxious, one night stand and loud about it - kinda people) we decided that we had had enough of renting. We needed our own place. And how convenient, as the housing market was near rock bottom and interest rates were continually declining.
We asked Justin's former bishop, the most WONDERFUL realtor on the planet, Tom Swallow (if you're looking to buy, please let us know so we can give you his number) to help us buy a home.
The process was rough. We had a few criteria we had to stay in. One, our home needed to be a certain price (which was certainly not very high) and two, it needed to be in a great location. Yes, I realize those two criteria can often conflict with one another. We looked for a few weeks and saw either houses that would need SO much work it would cost us a fortune just to make them liveable, or we saw very nice houses right next to the freeway or on the west side of the valley.
One day our realtor took us to a house on the upper east side a block south of Skyline high school. We read about it in the car before going in. 2,400 sq. feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, 0.20 acres, built int 1953. Not bad. From the outside it looked like a gothic 1970 flat roofed scary house. We were both raising our eyebrows like, "umm.... are you sure?" But don't judge a book by its cover! The minute we walked inside we both gasped. The front room had huge vaulted 15-20 foot ceilings with big brand new bay windows. There was so much natural light. (A MUST for me.) Next to the living area was a wood burning stove. There was a small winding staircase that led to an upstairs open loft with a front and back balcony. The loft had a gas fireplace. The kitchen (though it came with floor and ceiling water damage) was a beautiful galley layout with brand new appliances and 5 range gas stove. The two upstairs bedrooms were small and the bathroom definitely needed updating, but this was the best house we'd ever seen. The downstairs was 80% finished with a big family room, big bedroom, tiny bathroom, unfinished laundry room, a small man-cave type room and huge unfinished storage room. The backyard definitely made us laugh. The owners used to have a pool and filled it in, leaving a kidney shaped curbing that was the only area with grass. They must have started to build a poolhouse or sunroom and stopped, because there was a half finished structure that looked oddly out of place. To top it off, they built garden boxes right between the back and side yard, creating an obstructed path that wasn't going to get sunlight anyway. On top of that, there were to cedar trees they let grow into the telephone/power lines that virtually poisoned the soil with acid from the sap. It makes me laugh how little some people know about gardening.
We decided that given the location and awesome price, we would put in an offer. Our realtor warned us that this was a short sale, so it might be months before we heard back from the bank. To top it off, the seller's contract stipulated that we couldn't put any other offers in until we were either accepted or rejected by the bank. So that meant we would have to sit and wait. Possibly for months.
After discussing and praying, we decided it was worth it and went forward. There were three other offers submitted with ours. However, ours was accepted by the seller and submitted to the bank! This all went down exactly a year ago in November.
Weeks went by and we heard nothing. We both just sat around, waiting patiently feeling like the time was going so slowly. Especially since looking at other properties was out of the question until we heard from the bank.
It wasn't until the end of February that we heard back from the bank. They came back with a counter offer. For $35,000 more than our offer. We were both stunned and realized that was definitely out of our price range since the asking price was already at the upper limits of our budget. After discussing, we decided to just come back with another counter offer at our very max. We came back and said we could only spend an additional $15,000. We knew that at this point, it was out of our hands. Within a few days we heard back from our realtor very late at night with a text, "Congrats! You guys are home owners!"
We had two weeks to get a lender, our down payment, home inspection, etc. in order. It was all very intense and we both felt more grown up than ever before. It was very scary to see most of our savings disappear into our downpayment. However, we realized that we were just turning a liquid asset into the investment of a home. Our interest rate was phenomenally low, at 3.5%. We went with the 30 year mortgage just for the safety of it, but decided to pay above the monthly cost so we could hopefully pay it off within 15-20 years. Closing on our house was a smooth process that our realtor, Tom, made so stress free. We were all upset to find out the selling realtor, who works for Keller Williams, conned our realtor out of a few thousand dollars. To this day we hate that realty company because of their dishonesty. But cheaters never prosper, so hopefully they'll get their fair share of dishonesty as well.
After moving in, we of course found things that needed fixing right away. Fortunately we had enough savings to cushion the expenses. Justin has done most of the work himself. (You can learn anything from YouTube.) We have decided that while fixing and updating things, we are fine with spending more money to get the good stuff that will last a long time rather than trying to do quick fixes that ultimately fall apart in a few years (like the previous owner). Everytime we find things that obviously need fixing or that were repaired so haphazardly we call it a "Devan" because that was the name of the guy who owned our house before us.
Besides the backyard, bathroom, and water damage, I love the house. Even with all its quirks. It has been a great house. More importantly, we have the best neighbors on the planet, live in such on a such a great street, have had the most warm welcome from our new ward, our kids will go to some of the best schools in all of Utah and we live literally 1/4 mile from the canyon and a few blocks from freeway entrances. It has been great! Our bathroom is almost completely remodeled. (Pictures to come.) Next spring we will be turning our backyard into a great space with lots of grass, garden boxes (on the south side of course, where they will be actually getting sunlight), raspberry and blackberry bushes, a few peach trees, and the cedars are coming out. Yay! Pictures soon to come.
