It's been a long, long, tiresome journey to this point-- Nate and I are official homeowners!!!Did I mention it was long & tiresome?? Okay, if I'm being realistic for once, it was only two full months of searching until we stumbled upon this little place-- but it was a very robust two months of house hunting. Almost everyday after work and on the weekends, we would set out with our real estate agent, Tim, to see one or two or four houses. We lucked out having him as our agent because he lived just a few streets away and he was open to us texting him that there was a house and he'd set something up for that same evening. We probably saw fifty houses or more before we found our home. I'm sure I've said it before, but the real-world hunt for a home is nothing like HGTV.
I think what helped us land this house was that it was overpriced for the neighborhood, for the quality of renovations & updates that were made before they listed, etc. What was also interesting was that the sellers had put the house on the market for a lot less a few years ago. It didn't sell (obviously), and they took the time in-between listings to put some time and money into bringing the house into this decade. Or century, depending on how you want to look at it. Anyway, this house had been on the market for almost a month before we saw it in person, so I think it played to our advantage that they were probably feeling a little desperate.
When it was listed initially, it was about 15k or so over our budget, so we didn't even bother our agent to show it. About a week and a half later, they took the asking price down by 10k. Another week and a half went by, they lowered even more and we finagled our way into seeing it that night! We probably loitered in the house with our agent for about half an hour. Our agent, Tim, asked us "Could you see yourself living here?" and my resounding "yes" was probably the most certain I've been about a house the whole time we searched. There were a few other people walking through while we were seeing it which I think helped stoke the fire under our butts because we ended up writing and submitting an offer that evening. The sellers accepted our offer outright the next morning and didn't negotiate at all. It went pretty smoothly, if I say so myself!
And here we are! We celebrated immediately after getting the call from my agent that the title transferred by popping a bottle of champagne on the porch and aimlessly walking through the house for hours. It was more fun than it should have been, haha.
It's been almost two months since we closed on the house, and a month or more since Nate and I moved in. It still feels very foreign and weird at times, and we're in no way close to feeling settled- but that will come with time, right?! With the help of my mom (bless her), we got straight to work on the projects we wanted to get done, and of course, ran into some snafus-- which I'll get into in another post down the road. I finally feel like I'm making visible progress, so I hope to post some of the things we've accomplished here soon.
I'm so excited to share with you all my plans for the house. We feel so inspired and have a lot of ideas brewing, it will be so fun show all of you our progress!
