In the middle of April I flew to the northwest to find us a house to buy. I took notes and video for Ryan, but even still - what a sweet husband to trust me to go out and pick out a house by myself! He doesn't have any time off before he finishes his residency and besides that it would been expensive to fly out the whole family (since we have to buy tickets for both boys) so I traded some baby-sitting on Thursday and Friday and Ryan watched the boys all weekend (brave man).
Most the homes in the area we are looking are short sales which can take months to hear if your offer has been accepted. A short sale is when the seller owes more than the house is now worth in this falling market. I came back from the trip with two homes we wanted to make offers on. (with short sales you can put more than one offer in at a time).
Then, the day after I got home a house came back on the market that had gone "sale pending" the day before I left on my trip. Luckily my realtor had walked me briefly through this house as a comparable - we knew what it was pending at and it was the same floor plan and in the same neighborhood as another house I liked. I didn't, however, pay much attention as I had been looking at houses all day and this one was no longer available. I do remember feeling disappointed that it was taken.
Ryan and I decided to go for it - it is bank owned (a foreclosure) and so we are buying as is, but we got a response to our offer in 48 hours. My mom drove up to take pictures of the backyard - I hadn't even looked at it when I was there. My mother-in-law who is a realtor in Oregon (we are moving to Washington) represented us at the home inspection. It doesn't look like anyone has ever actually lived in it - it was most likely bought by speculators, but when the market crashed went into foreclosure. We beat out a couple other bids and we plan to close on June 5th.
We are pretty excited - it was built in 2006 - has 5 bedrooms and is 2700 square feet. The backyard is not the yard we have always dreamed of, it is in a development and it (the yard) is fairly small - but there is a park around the corner and we think it will be fine for us at this point in our lives. Plenty of rooms for the next couple kids (which since Riley has taken to praying that we will soon have twin girls - I don't know where he got that idea - we may need sooner that we were planning!) It will be our first house and it is a little crazy of us, we know, because neither of us has ever really examined it - but we have people we trust to check it out for us and I was in it briefly, once - and it is the same floor plan as another house I looked at very closely. We are buying it for 100,000 less than it sold for 2 years ago.
We were pre-approved, but financing is a little tenuous because it is based off a future job contract and Ryan ends his residency June 30th and so doesn't start his new job until July 2nd so we are still a little nervous standards might change and we might not get the loan, or we might have to figure something out with the close date... Anyway, we are cautiously super excited if that makes sense.
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