Eat, Explore & Enjoy: Our First House!

Yes, it's true! We bought our first house and are so excited and in awe it's really ours. The process happened so fast for us and was such a blessing! Long story short, we put an offer in on this house without seeing it. I know, kind of crazy! We had walked through 12 houses that week and knew from the photos we didn't want to lose out on this one. If you want to read the WHOLE (it's long) wild story - read on. :)

Our living room has high ceilings & lots of light. It has some cute cut-outs - I'll have fun figuring out how to decorate those spaces. And yes, we're still organizing the extra stuff! ;)

Let's start from the beginning! In mid-January, we came to the realization that we were ready to buy a house rather than renew our lease. We met with out realtor (who was recommended by a co-worker) on a Sunday in January (a few days before my birthday). We toured 7 homes the next day (we both had the day off work for MLK day). Some were ok, but many needed quite a bit of work and I was quite honestly a bit bummed by the end of the day, not seeing anything near the niceness I hoped for in our home. It seemed we'd need to spend a lot of money on something I didn't LOVE that would still need work. The verse that kept coming to mind throughout the week was “The Lord knows the desires of my heart”. I kept thinking, "He knows what I want, and hopefully we can find it." Over the next few days, we would get daily emails with new homes on the market and we saw homes post and get off the market so fast (sometimes the same day!). Many beautiful homes I'd find on other websites were usually already under contract. It was intense, and I didn't want to miss out on something great. I watched the MLS site and other websites before work, during lunch, and in the evenings. We didn't have much time until our lease would be up, so we were hoping to find something quickly.

Our master bedroom has vaulted ceilings and a double sided fireplace (shared with the living room). #allthehearteyes

Our realtor wasn't available for tours Wednesday after work, and I was getting nervous since I really liked one of the new houses that just came on the market Tuesday. We toured 5 more houses Thursday night – we loved one, really loved the neighborhood, immediately wanted to offer on it as we drove to the next house. Our realtor called the listing agent and found out they were taking offers through Sunday, so we had time to get an offer together. We both woke up Friday morning both having second thoughts about the cost being above what we wanted to spend, and different aspects of the house that made us nervous (like knowing it flooded last year when we had a month of rain). We got all of our financing stuff to our loan officer Friday since we were praying about making an offer on that house.

Bright kitchen - it has vaulted ceilings which I love!

Friday night, we were searching in the MLS database and found one I didn’t believe the cost was listed correctly. It was so beautiful inside, way nicer than anything we had seen before, and was a great price. I truly thought they had an error in the list price because of how much nicer it was than many we saw in this price range. We were so interested and emailed our realtor (who was on vacation for the weekend) to get her advice on how to see what house over the weekend while she was out of town. Mid-day Saturday, we hadn’t heard back from her, so we decided to drive by the house and drove around neighborhood.

So much natural light!

It was really nice, looked great and we liked the neighborhood. On our last loop through the neighborhood, a family was outside with a realtor looking at the house. That brought us to the reality that other people are looking at this house too. We pulled over at the end of the street and called the selling realtor, and left a message asking if she’d be in the area to show the house that weekend by chance, or if there was a way we could see the house with our realtor on vacation.

She called back while we were running errands, and left a message for us (somehow we didn't hear her call!) at 3:30pm that she wasn’t in the area, and final offers were due at 5:00pm that afternoon. “Sorry”, she said, it doesn't sound like you'll be able to see it. Our hearts sank. We were so excited about this house. We sat in the car and discussed if we'd be ok losing out on this one since we couldn't see it. We prayed, and called and left a message for our realtor to see if she’d get our message, and explained we loved the house from the photos online, liked the neighborhood, and and told her that offers were due at 5pm, if she got our message by then. We totally understood she was on vacation and even ended our message saying, "If you're not available, we understand and can just get the next one".

Pretty second bath

Thankfully, she called us back about 10 minutes later and verified we wanted to offer on a house we hadn’t seen yet. We said, "Yep! Are we crazy?!". She had looked at the house online and saw it was great too and confirmed for us that we’d only be out the $100 “option fee” if we saw it within the first week and wanted to change our minds and back out. We were willing to bet $100 on this house. She got back to where she was staying, compared the price to "comps" in the neighborhood and wrote up the offer contract while we prayed about an amount to offer, and sent her info she needed for the contract.

This was taken before we moved in (with the sellers things still here) - I love this cute nook going into the master bedroom too. It has its own light on a dimmer! So much character in this house.

She emailed the non-signed contract to the selling realtor at 4:59pm, and had us electronically sign it from our cell phones (we were sitting in a parking lot at this point) and send it back to her. She had texted our lender (who she knew personally) to get a pre-approval letter for that house specifically, and he told her he happened to know the realtor personally too. So he texted her and put in a good word for us! WOW! She sent everything completed over by 5:15pm, then it was wait time.

Surprisingly, we really weren't nervous with how she helped us write the contract, we felt pretty good that night, knowing we made a solid offer we felt comfortable about. We gave it our best shot, and we'd just have to wait and see. We watched "despicable me" that night. :)

Spacious double sink - yes!! I've always wanted two sinks in the master.

Then, we got the email we had been waiting for! I heard Nick's phone chime, checked my email, and yelled to him across the apartment, "did you read your email??!" He said "no! What does it say??!?" It said they wanted to work with us! Wooowwwww!!! We were in awe as I tried to figure out what that meant. So, did we get the house?!? Basically, yes! They changed a few small things on the contract like the closing date, so we each just had to sign the revised contract.

We set time after our realtor returned from vacation to see the house Sunday night. We loved it!! It was even better in person – there were a few really great things about the house the photos online didn't even do justice. There were high fives between all 3 of us that night. What a relief! We were thanking the Lord for how smoothly this all ended up working out. Praise God, this house is such a blessing! And it's so beautiful. More than I expected for our first house. He hears our prayers! The master suite is so big and beautiful, it has so much space for us to grow into, and is just perfect for us.

Lots of light in the eat-in Kitchen

Later the next week, our realtor texted us after she learned there were 12 offers on that house. We couldn't believe it and felt even more grateful we got it! The Lord gave us peace about the amount to offer, and somehow perfectly, it was ours. This house was on the market for less than 36 hours! The sold sign in front of the house said, "Sold in 1 day". Craziness! We were the "winners", and we hadn’t even seen the inside. Haha! God is so good! We are so thankful for how He orchestrated this whole process.

Our ginormous walk-in shower.

We moved in a week and a half ago! Over the weekend, I raked and bagged leaves for the first time and Nick mowed - it's so much fun to have a place to care for, and a yard to make our own. Thanks to our family for all the excitement for us, prayers and housewarming gifts! We feel so thankful and blessed for you all and are excited to have more guests over to show it off as we get settled. Ranger is loving his new house and yard too! It's been fun watching him out back since he's never had a yard.