Monday, March 14, 2011

A New House, Our Home

At the end of December Erik and I started discussing a new home for our family. We loved our neighborhood, greatly enjoyed our home that we had put much time and money into remodeling but as we started thinking about wanting to grow our family while continuing to have a place for Erik to work at home (which adds to his job satisfaction) we began to look around. Actually... we began to look at one house in particular. Erik found a house just 2 miles from our house in a beautiful neighborhood that connected to the one we currently loved and it was perfect except that it was a foreclosure. By the time we had the appointment with our realtor we had already driven by several times, peeked in the windows and had imagined what the floor plan would look like (foreclosures don't give you much info). We knew that we would instantly know when we walked through the house if it was the one for us. We had looked at our budget and we knew what we could offer and what we couldn't. And so, after one visit to the house (which apparently most people go 3 times) we put in an offer - I like to say we are decisive :).

I previously didn't know a lot about foreclosures. Yes, the are an opportunity to get a good deal but the banks that own them seem to play by a whole different set of rules. The offer process was a nail biter and through most of it I had little confidence we would end up with the house. Then of course there were the documents removing the bank from almost all responsibilities and waiting for an inspection. Being sold in an "as is" condition, we knew the items identified on the inspection would not be fixed by the seller but if there were any major things wrong with the house we could bow out of the contract. Thankfully, the inspector found little more than a rusty garbage disposal and a few other odds and ends. Praise God!

And so, we moved. We have now been in our new house for a little over 2 weeks and it already feels like home. I feel like we have had visitors almost daily which is exactly what we love. We are loving our new house, our home.

1 comment:

Allison said...

Congratulations! We bought a foreclosure back in September--hence the new address on our Christmas card! We LOVE it! I was like you with being worried about a foreclosure, but I knew if we had another baby, we would never fit in the house we were in. Our new house is over twice the size of our previous home, but less than $50k more. We are renting our other home and hope to sell it in a couple of years. I does stink to have to start over though, making a new house your own.