This is it. We finally closed on our first home. Even more so- we agreed on a home that we both fell in love with. And for the past… 3 months spent living, breathing, and obsessing over this new home. New is a relative term when talking about this house… its new to us. To the rest of the world its about 109 years old. Which is one of the reasons why we both fell in love with it.
To be honest I never thought we would find our dream home, I always wanted a fixer upper, and my husband really did not. When I first started looking at houses just to see what was on the market- he was horrified at some of the houses I would show him. Not so much for the price- more so for the condition they were in. I knew I wanted an old house, with lots of history.
I stumbled upon a link to a house, that was a lot larger then we were looking for, and pricier then we wanted. My mother encouraged me to just go and have a look, since it was vacant. So we went and we didn’t have a chance against that house. We both knew we wanted it- before we took the tour of the inside which was a week later. We went and got preapproved and got the process rolling.
The house which had been on the Market for a year and 6 months, had been originally listed at 200,000, but with the recession and flooded market being what it was had been knocked down to 158,000. With the home being vacant for so long, I knew it would have its fair share of problems which proved true during our home inspection. Getting the price knocked down to 123,000 for a Folk Victorian Style home built in 1900 was a feat in itself.
We drove by the house everyday for those three months. I was obsessed, it was the first house we had been in, that really felt like home to us. And the first home I could get my husband to agree was a wonderful deal.
The house was a nightmare to get, but we did get the home unreasonably fast for a short sale (about 3 months). We were basically drug through the dirt by the bank, the appraiser, the lender. Everything that could go wrong really did. Three weeks before closing we had the appraiser come out and he was insistent for us to pass we needed to have windows that were fully functional. Meaning we needed to have windows that opened and stayed open. Unfortunately we had windows that opened and slammed shut. Hard.
Since the seller was in debt to her eye balls, and I was financially strapped for my sale, I became Mrs. Window-fix-it, and spent about 2 weeks learning everything I could about window balances. The week of closing we fixed 21 windows, and 5 awning windows until about 2am in the morning for the 10 am inspection- which took all of 35 seconds since he only checked 2 of the windows before he approved us.
I think I sat in our new home the first day just letting it sink in that it was ours. Now that the fight was won, the real work could begin. Without further ado, our inheritance.
