Let me start from the beginning. Around October we started thinking about what we wanted to do once our lease was up (it's not up until the beginning of February, we were just really planning ahead lol.) We threw around the idea of buying land somewhere and building. My uncle is a contractor and has always said he would build us a house one day. We looked at different plots of land and different options, but it isn't the time for us to build right now. We want to live somewhere for awhile to make sure that's where we want to build. So once that was out we started looking online at houses. Nothing serious, just browsing. Occasionally we would drive around and look at some of the ones we found online. We knew we couldn't really do anything because of our lease at our apartment, but still just liked looking. We found this one house on Zillow early November and just fell in love with it. We drove by it many times, but we weren't serious about buying a house at the time and KNEW it wouldn't still be on the market when we were ready. I checked Zillow every single day to see if it was still on there. I called it "our house" and told Matthew it would still be for sale when we were serious about buying a house, I just knew it.
Fast forward to the Monday after Thanksgiving and we came home to a note taped to our door from our apartment letting us know that our lease was up in 6 months (as if we didn't know lol.) They listed the month to month leasing prices and we were FLOORED. If we chose to stay in our apartment and lease on a month to month bases until we found something then our rent would have almost doubled. Matthew and I both agreed that we would live in a cardboard box before we paid that for a 1 bedroom apartment. That same night we started looking on Zillow and other websites for houses. We had originally planned on using a realtor from church, but things happened so quickly. Tuesday morning Matthew called about the house we both LOVED (the one I kept calling "our house")since it was still showing up as for sale on Zillow. The realtor listing it told us it was under contract but if anything changed she would let us know. I'll be honest and say that I was completely bummed. I told Matthew I hope the contract comes off of it and it becomes available again to which he replied "Shel that hardly ever happens". So back to searching we went. We met with a realtor Tuesday night and he showed us a house. It was nice, but it just wasn't for us. That realtor became our realtor and we are so thankful for him! He lined up 2 more houses to show us the next day (Wednesday afternoon.) Well Wednesday afternoon right before we got off the listing agent on "our house" called and said the contract fell through and it was back on the market. Matthew asked our realtor if we could look at that one after the other two and he got it all worked out. So we looked at the first one and it was really small and didn't have much of a yard. The second one was REALLY nice and had been completely updated. It was a lot smaller than what we were wanting but it was just gorgeous on the inside. Our realtor told us there were multiple bids on it and if we put an offer in then we would be entering a bidding war and that the prices on those always shoot up quickly. So we went and looked at the last house ("our house"), as soon as we walked through the front door I knew we would be making an offer soon. Both of our reactions were the same and we kept giving each other the look. We drove out of the neighborhood and Matthew said "Well I think we just found our first house" and I cried. We went home and talked it over and prayed about it for a few hours and just felt like we really needed to put an offer in asap. So Matthew called our realtor and told him we wanted to make an offer. The sellers had until Thursday night to accept and they did. I'm pretty sure neither of us slept that Wednesday night, and we hardly ate anything all day Thursday waiting on them to accept or not. They accepted and we celebrated with ice cream from Dairy Queen.
So "our house" actually became OUR HOUSE! It all happened SO fast...like in four days fast but looking back now and we can see so clearly how it was all apart of God's plan for us. This house was on the market for 70 DAYS (only because it had a contract on it previously for a few weeks and then it was dropped) and right now that is unheard of. Especially in the area we bought it in. It is definitely a sellers market right now and houses are going so quickly after being listed. We still can't believe it, and we are so incredibly grateful!
2016 is starting out pretty great. We have a lot of work to do, but we are so thankful for the opportunity to make this house our home!
Here are a few more pictures from the past few months that I haven't been able to share until now :)
Celebrating that they accepted our offer at Dairy Queen!
First picture in OUR house. This was the night we had our home inspection.
Our realtor and home inspector checking out our fireplace.
And here is our closing gift from our realtor! The cutest basket and picture of our home. Love it all!
Come back tomorrow for pictures of the inside!
