We bought a house. My dreams and ambitions were keeping me up at night in terrifying fits. I couldn't continue what I was doing in our 2 bedroom apartment. I couldn't continue with foster care and I definitely never planned on raising a family in an apartment complex. Lots of tears and prayers later - a house happened.
A few highlights: I thought the house we would pick would feel like home upon our first entrance. A 'this is it' feeling - right? It didn't. Instead, we went and looked at houses on a Thursday or a Friday. Top of our price range houses, all of them listed as 3 bedrooms. None of them were what I would consider home. Neighbors too close. And the house that had the most property attached to it was a fixer-upper from the get-go. We had to do our first two quickly because there were still people living there and we had to have an appointment and then be out. That pace continued for the whole process - when we had done this before it was like we were trying the house on every time and looked each one over up and down and in and out. This time we were basically just checking through bedrooms - my mind fixed on, "Can I fit a bunk bed and two dressers in here?" I had an agenda.
I learned that there was no way I could stand being on a standard block with neighbors on either side. It left me feeling like I couldn't breathe, even when outside.
All these things weighed on me as I thought about the 6 or 7 houses we saw that night. I knew we didn't need to choose from those. There was time. But I couldn't get one of them off my mind. It gave me a race of excitement when I thought about it. It was an updater, for sure, but it was a corner lot in a neighborhood of retired folks. And that made the difference for me. I didn't remember any of the details of it, other than it needed some updating but seemed to be in decent shape. Being the worst house on the block gave us an advantage of getting into a good neighborhood and the ability to make it better, no matter what we did. It was also being sold as a 3 bedroom, when honestly, it is a 4 bedroom. And instead of a garage, it has a great room where there would have been a garage. It's a diy'ers dream. It's my dream. The possibilities are amazing.
We put an offer in on it that following Tuesday after stewing around on it over the weekend. I wasn't super attached and wasn't even sure if they would take our offer. We went $5k under asking price and asked for them to cover $6,500 of closing costs. Sellers aren't covering closings costs any more, our realtor told us. But we needed them to. So we said a prayer, fasted, and on Wednesday found out they had accepted our offer. We called up an inspector to give us a thorough report and found loads of things wrong with it. If this weren't our first house, we would probably have been intimidated. But naive and fresh, we lowered our offer another 10k. The inspector, before he left, gave us the advice, "Not going to lie. This house has quite the handful of problems." And we nodded and agreed and worried. And were a little scared. Probably most houses just have one or two things wrong with them - this thing had a 17 page report.
More prayers and fasting and they came back with a counter offer, taking only $5k off the price instead of the $10k that we had asked for. And we had a decision to make. With which we decided, sure, what the heck. Yes. It as built in 79, but while all this was going on, we were thinking it was built in 71. Which means that there was a very real probability of it having lead paint. More fasting and praying. That there wouldn't be any lead paint. It was a test of faith and Steven went and talked to all the neighbors he could get ahold of by knocking on doors, asking about the history of the houses and when they were built and what products were used in other people's homes. No lead paint. And nice neighbors that were happy to talk. It was amazing. I fell in love with the community that this street had created. A lead paint test by a professional to prove it as legitimate would cost $600. We weren't doing that.
We put an offer in, Sept 26th and were given the keys Nov. 21st. Almost 2 months. And I don't know how people have real jobs and buy a house. I did a lot of running around. A lot of phone calls. It was a full-time job. It was terrifying - talking about all the numbers that go into this kind of thing - and those numbers represent dollars. But I just continued on, knowing it would all end up ok in the end. Our loan ended up with a 4.1% interest rate, as opposed to the 3.65% we were expecting. But whatever. Can't change that. We also got slammed with a $2k flood insurance per year. That bumped up our mortgage a considerable amount and on our 'to-do' list is to get an elevation certificate to prove that we aren't as huge of a risk of flooding as they think we are. We would still have to have flood insurance, but it wouldn't be as expensive.
The numbers kept getting bigger and the costs for us kept adding up. No one talks much about how much money you have to put up for a house, not including the actual payments. Thank goodness we had the grace of my parents to meet us where we couldn't. They matched what we were able to put in and that saved us. We used that much and a little more for the downpayment. We payed $365 for an inspection report, $150 for a sewage scope, $700 for an appraisal and then had to pay our first year of flood insurance up front, $2,163. There were a lot of heightened heart beats and a lot of looks of, "Are we really doing this?" But we are. And we did. And we made our first half of the mortgage payment yesterday. We'll be on a schedule to pay half on the 15th and the other half on the 1st. This is supposed to take off a lot of interest in the long run. And to round things off, we're doing a $900 payment each time. This will force us to pay an extra $40 a month. That is maybe $200 shy of Steven's whole pay check.
We've done this before. When we were first married. We can do it again. 3 children makes it a little complicated, but I am going to make this work. I would rather be strapped like this now than later. Right now we are at the top of the pay scale for Les Schwab, so the only way to get more money is for a career change. Which Steven has been kicking around for a while, so this will be our catapult. Here's to making changes. And we've got a house to update before we take in any fosters, which I have already cried about. But it's better to put the time in now than to not be able to put that time in, ever, for lack of space.
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