Buying a house

The thought of buying a house has been on my mind constantly since I was around 7 years old. I think that’s about the time my parents told me my Grandma Helen and Grandpa Grumpa had purchased a savings bond from the city of Long Beach for my sister and I when we were born. I figured by the time I was 25, it would be worth a nice chunk of money and would make a nice down payment on a house. A couple of years later the bond was paid off early by the city, so is was not worth nearly as much money as it would be if it had matured. My Dad put it in a money market for me to get good interest. That’s where it sat undisturbed for years.

Then, when I was 16 I got my first credit card. It wasn’t until I was 19 and dating that having a credit card became a problem. This went on for a couple of years with some stern talks from my parents (it was my name on one of their cards). When my parents got divorced, I was 22 (I think). They were going to cancel the credit card since it was in both of their names. One problem… I owed about $8,000 on that card. My only option was to cash-in the money from the original savings bond and therefore… the nest-egg that was supposed to eventually be my down-payment. You think I would have learned my lesson, but it wasn’t until years later that I finally did.

I have lived in 7 different apartments or condos since I was 20. I am happy to say my life of renting is almost over. After years of hard work by both Vanessa and myself, we are finally ready to buy a house. At the end of February, Vanessa and I decided to stop by an Open House on a whim. We talked about buying a house in the summer and wanted to get an idea of what houses in the area were going for. That’s where we met two Realtors. Stacey and Cathy for as a Real Estate Team. They were so incredibly nice, did not pressure us, and genuinely seemed interested in helping us get what we want. Did I mention they adored Hannah?

The next weekend, and over the next four days I think they took us through 20 houses. Vanessa and I drove past at least 30 by ourselves. Some were absolutely awful (we were looking in the absolute low price range for the area). A few were fairly nice. We finally stopped by a place that was on the market for 1 day. We had stopped by the night before, but the lock box wasn’t on it yet. We couldn’t believe the sales price. It was in better shape than 95% of everything we looked at, but it was also almost the lowest asking price. Ah… I love foreclosures! Within 2 minutes and after seeing only ½ of the house, I knew this was the one I wanted. Luckily, Vanessa felt the same way. We drew-up an offer that night.

The bank accepted our offer, despite getting 10 others. This month has been an absolute whirlwind of paperwork, bank records, W2s, home inspections, phone calls, carpet samples, paint samples, Do It Yourself shows, and internet research. Vanessa and I have also slowly started packing. That is going to be a pain. We have so much stuff. We close escrow on May 16^th and we have until May 31^st to move out of our condo. That gives us two weeks to scrape the ceilings, remove some wallpaper, paint, have carpet installed in the bedrooms, and move. No problem.

Wish us luck. I’ll keep you posted.