On the 13th of this month, Curt and I closed on our house. Finally!!!
There is quite a bit of back story that I haven't been open with on my blog. My close, local, friends all know this story and have heard it so many times, but for the record... On March 30th, we moved out of our apartment and into our amazing friends' house with their family. While we had been looking for houses before our lease was up on our apartment, we hadn't been able to find one in our price range, that wasn't already under contract, or had a higher offer than ours. The whole process was very stressful, a roller coaster of constant mind changing and an emotional mess (more for me, than Curt...) For the whole first half of the year, we were constantly trying to decide between buying a house, renting a house or even going to another apartment. With the occupancy laws as they are in Texas, once our babies hit 18 months, they are considered a real person and our family would officially be a family of five. That means, we could not rent anything less than a three bedroom. Obviously renting a three bedroom is more expensive than renting a two bedroom, and that really complicated things when you consider that when you are applying to live somewhere, they want you to prove that you make either 2 1/2 or even 3 times rent. Since we struggled to even qualify for a two bedroom, low income apartment, we were really struggling with meeting the income requirements for renting.
That's why we always fell back to buying a house. Curt has wanted to go ahead a buy a house since we were engaged...and seriously looked into it twice during our marriage. Especially during the government's first time home buyer's tax credit. However, the one thing that has always stopped us is the closing costs. This is why we were constantly on this roller coaster of indecisiveness. It was horrible and every time I talked to people about it, I had a different answer as to what we were going to do. About two weeks before our lease was up, on the day we decided to give up and just go rent the cheapest three bedroom apartment we had been able to find (it wasn't pretty...and I don't mean just aesthetically...), one of my close friends called me and told me not to sign the six month least, but to come live in their two spare rooms. (Seriously, one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for us and has turned into the biggest blessing!) We were, of course, shocked and totally not going to accept their generous offer, but the more we thought about it over the next few days, the more we knew it was the push we needed and a way for us to save more money for the closing costs and costs associated with fixing up a house.
Back to March 30th...while we were packing to leave our apartment, we found out that a house we had put an offer on, was not accepted. While i was hard to hear, I really felt the spirit whispering to me that there was an even better house for our family. On April 10th, we found that house. Early on the 12th of April, Curt got the word that our offer was accepted on a house near Lake Worth. While my intuition said that this house would be ours, as soon as I got the text message from Curt saying, "Guess what?!" I started crying and was so happy and relieved to finally have an answer as to where we would live.
Little did we know what the next two months and one day would hold... It was a long process to work out how to get the underwriters to approve our home loan. While our offer was accepted by HUD and while we were pre-approved for the amount we bid on the house, it was still never really official that we would indeed get the house until May 22. Let's just say, a month and ten days later, we were very relieved to officially be getting this house. Curt told me then that a part of him had constantly been telling himself to be prepared for that phone call saying we wouldn't be able to get the house. We are so glad it didn't turn out that way!
So, what have we been doing for the past 11 days (other than not blogging)?? Well, this house needed some major TLC. There were holes in the walls, all over. There were no appliances, missing cabinets, gross popcorn ceilings that we (Curt and a friend) scraped, walls and ceilings to be painted, missing light fixtures, etc etc etc. We have been over there making this house into a home. We still aren't done! However, we are really pushing and hoping to move all our stuff in on Friday night or Saturday morning, get unpacked and move ourselves in by Saturday night. It's an ambitious plan, but every plan for the last 11 days has been ambitious. But, it's really starting to look good. It makes all the problems, heart ache, roller coaster rides, frustration and nervousness worth it. In a week, we will finally be in our own home!
