On the “Home” Front
Wow, so it’s been quite a little while since I’ve had (or taken?) the time to post anything here and our reader is probably wondering what’s going on (yes, I did find that we do have at least one reader…Hi Glena!…you’re name has been mentioned; you are now forever immortalized in the infinite expanse that is the internet). For any other potential passers by, here is what we have going on.
We closed pretty quickly on our house. The sellers wanted to close before the end of the year so we closed on Dec. 29th. It was quite the whirlwind getting everything ready for moving and that following day was a long one. We spent from 8 am to 11 pm getting things moved into a rental house that, incidentally, we really weren’t even able to live in yet. We weren’t able to get everything since we had some larger items that we had to leave in the garage and come back for (and we chose to do the move without a moving van, just trucks and trailers) so we spent the next couple of days making a trip or two back out to Charlotte to get the last of it (which included picking up our couch cushions off of the side of the highway after spending the night out there in the rain). When all was said and done, we were finally able to spend the night at our new digs on Wednesday. After becoming quite sore and a whole lot wiser, I am just now slowing down (at least physically) from the move. It’s a crazy thing moving all of your belongings from one place to the next. And a real pain in the a…ha…hahaha…you know what I mean…
So I figured we would be able to settle in for a little bit and then start back up looking at houses, trying to find our new home. We found a few to look at towards the end of the week and thought it sounded like a nice idea to go see them right away, so we ventured out on Saturday, hoping to have a nice, casual look around. All of the houses were foreclosures so all were vacant and we were not expecting much. One in particular was intriguing though since it boasted a very sizable 2300 sq. ft. of living space on two stories. The asking price was pretty low for that much house so we thought we would check it out, expecting it to be a dump. Well, it wasn’t. It wasn’t a dump at all. In fact, aside from a few simple cosmetic issues, it was in really good shape and looked as though someone had renovated it within the past several years. Naturally, we became rather excited about it and had our realtor check into its history to see what was wrong with it (at the listing price, it seemed a little too good to be true). We couldn’t find anything suspicious, so I had a friend of mine who renovates houses for a living give it a good looking over. He went over it with a fine-toothed comb from basement to attic and could not find anything to report. So we put an offer on it.
Since this house is a foreclosure, we expected to play the usual game with the bank. We make a low-ball offer ($20,000 under asking price actually) and the bank comes back with a counter-offer of a few thousand less than their asking price in the name of either being stuck on their asking price, or pretending to put up a fight before we come back with another offer only slightly higher than the last one. Well, as it turned out, the bank’s counter-offer came back only a few thousand higher than what our low-ball offer was so we are taking it.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are buying our next home!
This house was listed in September with a realtor at almost $40,000 more than what our mortgage will be (we rolled in prepaids, the actual sales price will be slightly over $40 K more). So we seem to have found a great deal for a house almost one-and-a-half times the size of our old one, in a great area that is close to work, the kids’ school, friends, and family. We are very pleased and are now commencing with the rigamarole that is preparing to close on a house. We have a meeting with our mortgage broker tomorrow, I am scheduling an inspection, we have papers to sign, on and on…
So please continue to pray for us in this process. It looks like we’ll be moving again in a few weeks. I’m not particularly looking forward to that, but this has all been so obviously God’s providence and we are incredibly pleased. Please feel free to comment, call, or e-mail for any further details. Soon enough, I should be e-mailing you all our new address.
Oh, and um…there is no fireplace. Drat! Hopefully we can leave closing with enough cash for a wood-burning stove or something…
Peace to you.