A New Home!

A couple months ago, David and I began the process of looking for a house to buy.  We started by casually checking out houses online (thank goodness for the internet to make everything go by so much faster!) to get a sense of what things looked like in our price range.  It was a bit discouraging, as there were way more "junk" houses than ones we would ever consider buying.  We realized if we could just afford even $10,000 more, we could get a much nicer house.  But we stayed positive and prayerful, and hoped that eventually the "right" house would come along.

David went to the bank and received a very good credit report and was pre-approved for a house.  We found a realtor and started setting up appointments to go look at houses in person.  We turned out to have some pretty funny stories about our realtor.  The first time we told him we needed to pray about a house, he smiled and asked, "I was wondering, are you two brothers and sisters in Christ?"  The first response that came to my head was, "We're married!"  Luckily I thought before speaking, and instead replied, "We're Christians...(never before hearing the phrase "brothers and sisters in Christ").  Things got progressively weirder with him, as he would say things such as, "Is this Sir David, son of the Most High God?"  I think when we buy a house I'll send him a thank you with the mormon.org card attached.  ; )

Our two areas of interest were Fishers and Westfield.  We currently live in Castleton, which we absolutely love, but unfortunately it does not have a good school district, which was a high priority of ours.  Westfield and Fishers are both nice towns, with plenty of shops and restaurants, good wards, and top school districts.

The first house we saw was a foreclosure (Note: Never look at a foreclosed house unless you are the kind of person who dreams of a fixer-upper).  It was such a disaster I was in shock!  I'd always imagined that when I went shopping for my first house that we'd be looking at charming, updated, beautifully decorated (and clean!) houses.  I'd never seen such a pit!  Needless to say, that gave us a good little shake-up, but we knew things could only get better from there!

The second house was MUCH prettier, and had a very lovely kitchen.  However, it was too small (as were most of the houses we looked at), and was also in need of too much TLC.

After those two singular house visits, we started to get the hang of house-hunting and devoted hours of mornings to looking at several houses at once.  We got our hopes up many times about one house or another, only to find that it was already sold, too far from work, didn't have a dining area, didn't have a big enough yard, was right next to a noisy concert arena, etc.  We soon caught on that the good houses were selling like hotcakes, and that we needed to work efficiently and grab on tight when we found a house we really liked that met our criteria.

David and I did not always like the same qualities in houses, and would sometimes veto each other's choices.  We realized that we'd each have to do some compromising to find a fit that we both loved.

Eli had so much fun looking at the houses with us.  He'd stomp through every house with a huge grin spread across his face.  I think he could have easily made himself at home in any one of them.  : )

Last weekend while house-hunting in Westfield, we went through a house that perked both of our interests.  We took the weekend to pray about it, and after receiving good feelings we made an offer on Monday morning.

Our first offer was over $10,000 lower than the asking price, so we knew there'd be a counter-offer.  The first counter-offer was still really high, though, so we began to worry that the owners would not go low enough in price for us to afford it.  We made a second offer, which again led to a counter-offer.  We found out that the owners only bought the house two years before, so they didn't have much room to budge.  We made the decision to back out on our offer, but our realtor suggested trying one more time.  Well, third time was a charm because they accepted!

When David called me from work yesterday to tell me that the deal went through and that we just BOUGHT A HOUSE, I started to cry.  I immediately felt a warm rush through me, and was just so overcome with peace and gratitude.  I don't think either of us thought our offer would end up being accepted, and I know I was completely stunned.  I smiled through my tears and exclaimed to Eli, "We bought a house!"  David and I joyfully laughed over the phone about our happy surprise, and wished we could have found out while we were together.

We are so excited to begin this next chapter of our life, and look forward to all of the memories that will be made in our new home.