The Hunt for a Home

If you remember, the day I found out I was being induced, we also got pre-approved for a home loan so hubby and I have been looking at houses and we think we found one that we can call home for at least a few years before our family grows and we outgrow it.

We spent 2 weekends looking at a bunch of different houses in our price range that were the style and size we were looking for in the area of town we were looking in. We narrowed it down to 4 and went back through with my dad to get his thoughts. We ruled one out right away as it was a short-sale but with some complications we'd rather not deal with.

Our 1st choice, we would need to replace the carpet in the whole house and do some painting and buy a fridge but figured that wasn't too much work to do. It had everything we wanted and more - a 2 car attached garage, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms one of which was a nice master bathroom, a nice entryway, a finished basement, a fireplace, a deck, a fenced backyard that backed up to a golf course... we ended up not putting an offer in though as our realtor found out that the bank that owns it was taking at least 3 months to get back to anyone that put in an offer and had turned down several that were within $9k less than the asking price. He said there was 1 offer currently in on the house and had been made a month ago... he said we could put ours in in case the previous offer dropped but then it could be 3 more months til we hear anything and well, our bank gave us 90 days to find something as we'd have to run our credit again.

So we narrowed it down to the 2, one was the best out of what we saw our first weekend of looking, the other was one my mom saw an open house listing for in the paper that we went and saw. The 2nd one, by the time we went back with our realtor to look at it, they raised the price $9k as they went ahead and started finishing the basement. The original price was within our loan amount, but since they raised it, it was out our price range, not to mention just more than what we were willing to pay anyway and we had a feeling it'd be tough to talk em back down to the original price after they finished the basement.

Hopefully our home come the end of the month!

We're fine with the 1st though. My only big issue is that the 3rd bedroom is actually in the basement and not on the main floor, not to mention it only has a 1 car garage and we would have preferred it be a 2 car garage. Other than that though, it's really nice! Only 7 years old, has a fenced backyard and a deck, finished basement with a bar and full bathroom and the 3rd bedroom, and the only major things we need to buy right away are a fridge and washer/dryer - it's completely move-in ready. We put an offer in last week and had a counter-offer the next day. We countered back and so did they, to a price we were hoping they'd drop to, although our realtor went back and was able to talk them down into accepting our last offer, so we're getting it for our 2nd asking price! We're signing the final contract tomorrow and just waiting for the loan to go through before we can close on it and move in - hopefully by the end of the month if not the beginning of April!

How exciting!!!