Keeping the Momentum Going!

Now that there is blood flowing through this blog again let’s keep it flowing with another update. One thing that you might want more of is pictures. We have them, but I don’t know if we can get them posted. The computer we do that from is suffering from a nasty virus and I don’t think Alexis’ school laptop is set up for us to do picture stuff. Why don’t I use the computer I am on now to upload the pictures you ask? Because I am at work. Time well spent.

The reason I bring up pictures is because I am going to chat about our new house. The pictures would be very useful in a before and after context. But instead you will have to use your imagination in concert with my description.

A little background info. Alexis and I had been looking to buy a house around this time last year, but since I had been self-employed I needed to have two years of that history, which would be around now. But when I was hired in August we went into high gear for finding a house. We were ahead of the game in that we already knew what part of town and even what neighborhood we wanted to live in so we were quickly able to narrow our search and get serious. We looked at several houses. Two of which we really liked and went so far as to make offers on them. But we were a day too late in both cases. This taught us to move faster. We knew what we wanted and how much we could afford, so if we liked something we knew we could respond quickly.

Quickly. One weekend, during our house hunting, Alexis had to go out of town. I had one house that we were supposed to look at, so I went solo. I loved it. It was everything we wanted; updated, well kept, pool, hot tub, sprinkler system, game room, the whole nine. Only problem was Alexis had not seen it. Another problem was that I thought the house was priced really low for what we were getting. We had to act quickly, I did not want to be a day late on this house. So I made an offer that day. Ballsy I know…

The whole time I was in contact with Alexis, so she knew what I was doing, but she had not seen it for herself. I started with a low-ball offer. It was rejected. I considered that the house was priced to sell, and certainly would in this neighborhood, so I met their asking price. By the time they accepted our offer, Alexis had returned and had a chance to tour the house, she liked it too. My gamble paid off; luckily.

It was a fun time during the whole process. The house was vacant so we could go whenever we wanted. We were present for the inspection, and besides a dirty pool, the inspector only found small things; nothing major. A relief for both of us.

In the days approaching our closing and move in date, we brainstormed about all of the things that we wanted to do. Painting, carpet, landscaping, furnishing the game room, and generally making the house our own.

As for acting fast, we learned during the days leading up to close, that if things fell through, the sellers had a back-up offer in hand and had received a couple other offers on the house. Who knows, if we had not acted as quickly as we did, we probably would not have gotten the house.

The description will be posted later...