Fast Track

Y'all, this home buying process is really moving now.  All I can say is Praise the Lord!

Tuesday I told you how they had scheduled the home inspection for next Tuesday...and that I couldn't wait.  Well guess what?!? I didn't have to! Tuesday evening our agent texted me.

 (By the way can I just say how much we love our agent?  I loved her before because I have known her forever, but she has just really been amazing through the whole process.  It takes patience to deal with these two new home buyers.)

She texted me Tuesday night and said she had a different inspector that could come....the next day!  So I jumped on the phone and called Jacob.  I had workshops an hour away on Wednesday and Friday this week so I knew I may not be able to be there so he definitely needed to be.  (Especially with his daddy the home improvement guru.) But, even better news...Tracie scheduled him late in the afternoon so I could make it too.  It was amazing. 

Then, on top of all of this good luck, we had the best inspector ever.  He was so nice and explained everything and just sung the praises of our new house.  (Which makes a home buyer feel really good since I am already really proud of it!)  Jacob's dad came and everything the inspector said was things he could fix. (Although it was just cosmetic stuff he was mentioning not anything that will actually be a problem.)  My mama also came so that we could measure windows. 

The whole thing was wonderful.  (I need a thesaurus apparently I believe I have said wonderful a million times!)  So our inspection is done.  We turned in our final loan disclosures yesterday.  We have to go sign one more paper today that had gotten left out somehow but the whole thing is going right along. 

Oh, and look at this beauty we got this week. (My dad and Poppy are trying to figure out exactly how to mount the top to the bottom in this picture.)  My great-great uncle (yeah) loves antiques and has all kind of things in a shed in the back of his house.  Well he had this beauty.  The top is great.  It has been refinished a dark wood color that I love.  The pedestal is not the original one, and it doesn't match right now.  But we will be refinishing it next week so match and we will have a nice dining room table.  (Which you can order leaves for this one so when there is a large group eating we will have room!

The appraisal should be happening in the next 5-10 business days.  (Hopefully closer to 5.)  Then, the underwriters will finalize everything and it will go over to the USDA.  (We are getting a USDA loan. )  The USDA is currently 3 weeks behind so that is where we are standing right now.  It is looking like we are 30-45 days away from closing.

Yes, Jacob is trying out furniture.

 

If you (Pamela since you are the only blog reader I am talking to you!) are the praying kind of person please pray that we will be closer to the 30 day mark.  Since we are both teachers it would just really be much less stressful to be in the house before school starts.  And Jacob is the football coach at his school (not sure I had mentioned that) and he will be practicing basically all day starting at the beginning of August.  So before school starts is really going to be helpful!

 



Look what we got!

Yep, that is a signed purchase agreement! Yesterday I hounded politely called Mr. Mortgage Man.  Actually I emailed him because I didn't want to inconvenience him by calling and annoying him.  Then my phone rang!

 

He said the underwriters had given us the go ahead for the loan so we are well on our way to being homeowners!  Up to this point this is what we have done:

6/4/13- Got original pre-approval.  (The one that meant nothing.)
6/5/13- The house we wanted to look at first sold.  (Thank You Jesus.  Blessing in disguise I do believe.)
6/10/13- We looked at houses and found the one! (We looked at 7 houses in one day.)
6/10/13- We made an offer on our house!
6/11/13- We got the counter offer from the sellers which gave us pretty much everything we wanted and only raised the price we offered by a little bit.
6/13/13- Talked to Miss Loan Lady (ugh) who busted the nice bubble that we were living in by saying we needed at least 20% down.  (Hello what first time home buyer really has that?)
6/13/13- Called Mr. Mortgage Man.  Knew we found the one to help us.
6/14/13-Met with Mr. Mortgage Man.  Gave him the blood of our first born child.  (At least that is what it felt like.)
...then we waited.
6/24/13 Mr. Mortgage Man called and said we were good to go!
6/24/13 Our wonderful real estate agent (whom I have known forever) let us come over to her house to sign since she wasn't at the office.
6/25/13- Emailed Mr. Mortgage Man our signed purchase agreement.

So now we are back to the waiting game.  But now we feel free to pick things out so of course we went to Lowes last night.  That is our new favorite place!

So, the next couple of weeks will be really busy but I wouldn't ask for anything else!

While We Wait

They say patience is a virtue.  But it surely is not one this girl possesses.  We went last Friday to complete our loan information for the house and were told we should hear something within 3-4 days. Well we didn't start counting days until Monday (because we assumed that that is when the actual loan underwriters would get the information anyway) which would have put us hearing something Thursday or Friday.  Well no such luck.

I have learned Jacob isn't very patient with the waiting game either (although he is extremely patient in every other aspect of life) by this conversation.

"Have you hear from the loan today?"

"Nope"

"We are never going to hear anything."

"Well eventually we have to hear something.  They have to say no at the least they have to respond."

"It has been a week!"

This was Thursday.....which was actually day 6 but only day 3 counting from Monday. 

We just knew we would hear something yesterday.  But we didn't hear anything at all.  So instead we went and looked at furniture and household items.  Which led to us realizing that I like really girly things and Jacob will probably regret saying I could pretty much decorate how ever I want.

I am trying to be considerate but I don't think that things he thinks are girly are girly...just pretty.  So the whole decorating thing should be pretty interesting.  But, yesterday we did pick out our living room furniture.  (Which is going to be a wedding gift from my parents. Yay!)

 

We went to furniture store after furniture store yesterday. We sat on tons of couches. I kept being drawn to couches with this basic look though.  I love the color because it is so neutral.  I am a mind changer.  I will probably want to redecorate over and over again.  I feel like this couch is neutral pallet.  I will be able to do so much just by changing out some throw pillows!

The set comes with a sofa a loveseat and an accent chair which is in the fabric of the circly pillows.  We probably will not get the accent chair because we would like a bigger chair (like a recliner or a chair and a half) so we can really get comfortable.  I am already wanting to recover these pillows to get some color going on.  Here are some of the fabrics I am considering.

source

 

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(Although I am pretty sure that would is considered too girly by the man of the house.)

 

I want something bold but not overwhelming.  I am thinking envelope pillow covers with some cute button closures would be super cute. 

 

So, now I am off to decorate my hypothetical house in my head.  (Seriously what did we do before Pinterest!)

 



Really?!?

Okay, so remember when we looked at houses last week?  Well yeah going into that I believe I mentioned we had a pre-approval from our own bank. We were so excited.  Even though they wanted the blood of our first born child in return.

I had to get all kinds of information together and we were waiting on some of these things to come in.  Well in the meantime the couple owning our house (yeah we call it our house already) counter offered.  We were pretty happy with their offer though.  Then I talked to Miss Loan Lady. (which I don't say as a nice name.  I say it mean.)

Miss Loan Lady said that we didn't need to sign anything because this loan system was new and they didn't know much about it yet and she had heard of people who got pre-approval not having actual approval.  Excuse me what?  You are saying that you approved us for a loan 20,000 dollars more than what we now need and that was all just a joke?  Seriously?  So I cried for a solid day because all my fears were coming true.

This wasn't going to be mine!

 

 

Seriously, I cried all day.  I was pissed.  Really pissed.  But, we finally got all our paperwork in and we decided it was still worth the try.  We took a big file folder including the agreement to give them the blood of our first born and then Miss Loan Lady made it all worse.  Our approval was based on a 5,000 dollar down payment.  Hello, that is not a small chunk of change?  I don't know about you, but we are just starting out and that is way more difficult than it should be.  Miss Loan Lady said that if this new system (which hello she should have training on before she is able to break the hearts of obviously already attached future homeowners.) was anything like the old system it wouldn't let us get away with anything less than 20% down.  (Yeah I watch HGTV I know this is fairly common but seriously who has that starting off?) That would be like $27,000...cash.  Yeah excuse me while I go get that out of my other purse.  No, we don't have that type of money. So my dreams are dashed right?

 

 

 

But, these people are very determined.  We found out about USDA loans.  Well we kind of already knew about them.  But we didn't know our house was eligible.  (They make it seem like there is some kind of odd qualifications but seriously there isn't.)  Perk of living in the boondocks...no one else wants to live here!  This is 100% financing.  Which means no down payment at all.  (Which means we can put a pool in with what we were planning on using as a down payment...yay.)

 

 

But our bank doesn't do USDA loans.  (Seriously Miss Loan Lady, you are at the top of my list at this point.) But we were turned to some people that do by a good friend of mine.  And let me tell you something.  Mr. Mortgage Man is wonderful.  He absolutely rocks.  He has been the most helpful person on the planet.  We now are so much more informed.  We feel much better about where we are in the process.  I called on Thursday, we had a meeting on Friday and are now waiting on the underwriters to let us know.  Which is making this the longest week ever.  We are already so much farther in the process than we ever got with Miss Loan Lady.  So that is where we are.  Waiting on Mr. Mortgage Man to let us know.  But he feels well about our chances...which makes us feel amazing. 

 

 

But luckily, this weekend I got to keep my mind off of it because my family went to the beach!  My mom's brother was down for a visit and we all gathered at the Beach.  Post on the whole trip coming soon!

 





We'e buying a house

...wait what?!?!

Yeah, we made an offer on a house today.  I feel like such a grown up.  Seriously who is letting me make an offer on a house?  I am a child. (But seriously I am not, I just kind of get stuck in that mind set.)

So today we looked at 7 houses.  Yeah 7.  Our day actually started with a nice lunch.  We live in a small town where there isn't much to talk about in the food department.  With that in mind we decided to randomly drive 30 minutes away to eat.  (Which is no longer in our budget. Yeah.)

So that I will remember it when I look back here are the houses we looked at. 

P.S. Weird thing about buying a home in a small town where you already live an grew up....you know whose house it is.  Which is weird.

Here is number 1

We walked in and knew this wasn't it.  It wasn't one thing or another it just wasn't it.  And it was kind of small.  That was probably it. 

 



This was number 2.  It was the leader at this point.  (Against the one other house.) The fence was weird on it.  It didn't go all the way to the edge of the property.  Really odd.  And I don't love that it is yellow.  We wanted a brick house. 

 

 

Number 3...which is much more appealing in person than in this picture.  The living room and kitchen were absolutely wonderful.  But the rest of the house was just a little out of date for us.  We are too busy for too many projects in a house.  We wanted something we didn't to do a lot to.  But we could have lived here.  (Winner right now)

 

 

Going into the day we thought this house was our number two.  But apparently he person who took pictures of this house knew what they were doing.  It was not wonderful.  The rooms were much smaller than the pictures made them seem.  We just couldn't really see ourselves here. It is also on the golf course so we wouldn't have any privacy.

 

 

Then we saw this house.  Jacob has actually lived here before. Not this exact house, but a house with the exact same layout.  We didn't love it.  It was really, really small on the inside.  The rooms couldn't fit any more than a twin bed.  We knew this wasn't it.

 

 

Then we saw this and fell absolutely in love.  We could definitely see ourselves here.  We could see having kids here.  We loved that it had a garage.  We loved everything about the house.  Except for the outside.  As you can see it needs a little love.  And this was at the very top of our price range.  Which meant there would be no money left for improvements for a little while.  But we were willing to work on it.  This was ahead by leaps and bounds at this point.  We were going to the house that we loved before the search last and we knew it had some big shoes to fill.

 

 

Then we went here.  Look at that yard.  And you should see the back. It is immaculate.  And it has a shed/man cave. And it doesn't need us to do anything to it but move in.  Maybe paint.  But even that isn't absolutely necessary.  So fingers crossed this is our house.

 

It was so funny, we had said that we would look at houses, come home and talk about the houses and then call our agent back the next morning.  But it wasn't necessary.  We knew.  This was home.  So we went straight to her office to make an offer.  And now we wait.  The seller has until 5pm tomorrow to get back with us. 

 

This has been an extremely crazy day but hopefully the next few months will be even crazier as we start our lives together.  (By the way our agent will be leaving the country the middle part of July...so we have to get our butts in high gear!) 

Take Two

So, I have had my tries at blogging before.  None too successful, but this will be different! Because not I actually have something to blog about! My first attempt was in college/student teaching and seriously a) who has time for that and b) who wants to read about that because it isn't interesting.  But this will be different because my life is starting to fall in to place...and it is falling at a pace of Olympic runner. Seriously everything is coming together like...now.  So here we go!

Back Story

So here is a little background on who we are.  Jacob and I have been dating for 4 to 5 years.  (It is a little un clear when we officially started dating.)  We were friends my senior year in high school ( '06-'07) so that was 7 years ago.  Jacob was older than me but we ended up in the same groups quite often.  We each dated other people on and off and then late into my Freshman year we started dating.  But it wasn't anything serious but it was a lot of fun. And we never dated anyone else again. 

I would post some old pictures of us right here but those would be on a thumb drive somewhere in a drawer...and I am pretty sure I could put my hands on them but I am entirely too lazy to do so.

Jacob was working at a saw mill when we started dating.  Had to take disability leave to have shoulder surgery and then the mill was shut down....so he went back to school.  Which made me a very happy girl because he went to be a teacher.  (Which was the same career I was pursuing.)  We would be on the same schedule and that would be great right?  Expect we weren't.  Because he was at a local Junior College when I was at a 4 year so our schedules never worked out.  And then when he was at South with me all things would have been great right?   Except for no.  Because I was in my teaching classes which made me on public schools schedule for the most part.  It has been quite a journey.  I think this was great for us though because we had to make each other a priority the entire time.  Time wasn't easy to get together; we had to make time together. 

Oh yeah, Jacob was coaching high school ball at this point as well.  So that made things a million times easier....yeah right. 

I graduated with a degree in Elementary Education in December 2011.  (Not that anyone wants to hire teachers in December) and subbed for the rest of that school year.  And then last summer, Praise the Lord, I got a teaching job at a newly formed city school system in our area.  Which was interesting.  (First Year Teaching+ First Year of a School System= Stressful) and Jacob was student teaching on top of that.  Oh yeah and still coaching ball.  I mean seriously I am thinking right now how did we ever see each other?

Then, last December (2012) Jacob graduated!  Yay! And the school he had been coaching at (where he went to High School) hired him. But then, as all first year teachers you always wonder do I really have a job next year?  But we were both kept on for another year!  So, now that we have a little bitty bit of security....

We are house shopping!  (Yes, and other commitments that go along with that.) 

Why Blog?
So why blog now? (Seriously, when will I have time?) Well, I think that this is the best way to keep a record of what we are doing and the whole process of building a life together.  I am not writing this for others.  (Although imaginary friends would be great.) I am writing this so that in the future we can look back and see how far we have come. 

We start the process (well we actually already did since we have been pre-approved for a loan) for real on Monday with looking at some houses.  We seriously have like 6 or 7 houses lined up to see on Monday.  In our heads (with the use of the internet) we have already basically narrowed it down to 2 houses that are in a very heated competition for our love and commitment. 

So, Monday I will be back with some news hopefully or at least how we feel about each house. 

Now I am off to stalk Young House Love and Pinterest for some lovely home ideas.