Looks like an innocent enough house, right? If you only knew.... I haven't been posting about our home-buying saga just in case something fell through at the last minute. Heaven knows there were enough opportunities for something to go wrong, but in the end 2 sellers, 2 offers, a short-sale, a bank mistake, and 6 months later it's finally ours! Seriously, you may not care to hear all of the drama, but for the select few of you who do, here was the process: Even though it took FOREVER, I'm actually very grateful. We weren't planning on buying a home yet. Yes, we were hearing that it was an amazing time to buy, and interest rates were at an all-time low, etc, etc, but honestly I just didn't want to think about it yet. We had found the perfect little rental home in the perfect little neighborhood, with the perfect little park across the street, with great neighbors, in the perfect ward with the perfect elementary school. We were content to stay there until an even more perfect home fell into our laps. Ok, I should say I was content to stay there. Dan had periodically been looking at home listings just because, and I secretly rolled my eyes thinking that that day was a long ways away. Then we got what became known in our house as "the email". Our landlord accidentally forgot to mention before we signed our lease that he was behind on his mortgage, and he either had to try to sell his home as a short-sale or let it go into foreclosure. Talk about stressful. Not to mention that the email came 3 days before the RS Super Saturday that I was in charge of. That's a completely different story... :) I assumed we would have to find another rental house. Much to my dismay, I realized the reason he gave us such a good deal on the house we were in was probably because he wasn't using that money to pay the mortgage anyways. Because everything else around us, even if it was way smaller and way older was hundreds of dollars more a month. So disappointing. Dan finally convinced me to call a loan officer one day while he was at work to give them our info to see what we could get preapproved for as far as a mortgage. To our surprise, it was not only enough to buy a home, but with interest rates being as low as they are we could own for cheaper than what it would cost us to rent. We actually found the house pretty quick. It was the 2nd house we walked through. It was a short sale, but whatever. That just meant we would get a good deal, right? Our realtors tried to make sure we understood how complicated it can be to get a buyer, a seller, and a bank to agree on an offer, but we were confidant it would work out. Our offer was accepted by the seller right away, then the wait to see if the bank who had the sellers mortgage would accept it. Four months later, in July, we got the call that somewhere along the way the short-sale agent messed up and the house ended up going to auction, even though we were under contract. The bad news was that someone else bought the house. The good news was that it was just an investor who wanted to turn around and sell it to us. The more bad news was that he raised the price a bunch. The best news though, was that because interest rates continued to drop it didn't affect our monthly payment. So we now started the whole offer game all over again, with a new seller. After that was finally settled, we had 5 (yes 5!) closing dates set before we actually closed on the home. Little random things here and there that were completely out of our control made the whole process crazy, all while hoping that the bank wouldn't come knock on our door and make up move out at our rental house. Many times we wondered if it was even worth it, but than realized we really didn't have many other options.
So... I realize that probably sounded like a lot of whining. But (and I say this with hesitation, because it is all still very recent:) I think I'm grateful for the way it all happened. I have always known and I still know that things work out the way they're supposed to. It would have been easier to skip the whole rental house fiasco altogether. But we made some great friends in that neighborhood that we wouldn't have made any other way. Jacey was able to start Kindergarten in a fabulous school which we love. Even though we still live just as close to that school, we are just barely out of the school boundary. However, since she started there, chances are very good that she will be able to stay there for all of elementary school, and because the oldest child is a student the younger siblings are automatically accepted as well. We wouldn't have minded if the whole buying process would have moved a little quicker, but we learned patience. We prayed harder. Who knew that so many scriptures could be applied to buying a house? We were reminded over and over again how important it is to look past your own trials to those around you. Doing that reminded us how truly blessed we are. Our family is happy and healthy. It doesn't get much better than that. Once the process had been stretched out about as long as anyone could bear, we came to the realization that a house is just not that big of a deal. We realized that our family has been happy in an apartment before and we could be happy in an apartment again if that's what it came to temporarily. Once we got the point where we felt like it could all fall through and we would be just fine, that's when we got the final word that they wanted us to sign papers, like, right that minute. Over the past few months we've done a lot of studying and learning about receiving blessings with thankfulness. That's what I'm the most grateful for. I love this home because it's ours, not because it's my dream home. And that is just fine. Right now, I'm just grateful....
