Fall of 2013 we were looking at houses online, not to buy just to see what's out there and what interested us. Since we signed a one year renters lease I had zero intention of taking our house hunt seriously for a while. (Seth may have had trouble holding back his intentions. Just sayin'.) In November looking at houses actually became quite stressful so I threw down the hammer and said "no more looking at ANYTHING for a few months! We are not ready!" Seth behaved badly and still peaked.
One day last December Seth says to me "So, I have a house for you to look at- BUT it's not my fault because the website emailed ME!" The reason the website emailed him was that the house had been on the market several months but now dropped 65K in price making it in our price range and a short sale.
I looked at the pictures online and dang- it looked great. So we called Charles, a family friend realtor, and I told him we have no business looking at houses but we've got to see one. We toured the house and dang- it looked great. The house is in Orem (at the Orem/Provo change over which just means we can't get google fiber) right by the mouth of Provo canyon- so we dubbed it the mountain house. It has a beautiful library, awesome deck, and so much character. So all of sudden, the first week of December we got financing and put an offer in on our short sale.
I wanted this bad boy to take months- so I figured it would close as the worlds fastest short sale. But we waited. Seasons changed and we waited. School ended and we waited. We would drive past it and imagine the things we'd do to our mountain house. And waited. When May came around we started to wonder if we were hoping for a house that we had built up in our minds so we toured it again. It was a nice dose of reality (we started making things up about the house "there's a door there" "no there's not!" etc) but the mountain house still called to us so we waited. We left town and came back again with no news.
Then came the end of June. If we were going to move before school started up again then we had to buy soon, so Seth and I decided that when we returned from England on July 2nd if the bank hadn't approved our short sale offer we'd do a full house search and wash our hands of the mountain house. The very day we got back in the country I got an email saying the bank approved our offer. (At that point I was so tired and jet lagged that at the idea of packing and moving I considered backing out of the offer. Luckily saner minds prevailed and after some sleep I decided it was still a good idea.)
One thing that was hard for me is that I waited for seven months for this and my enthusiasm had waned. Sure it was a great house, yeah it needs work, sure I'll buy it, whatever. It felt very anticlimactic. I had friends tell me that the house was right if I felt "excited". I didn't. I felt positive but I was also detached. The inspection was still pending. If our inspector found mold and cracked foundation and termites and rats and a homeless guy living in the attic then we probably wouldn't buy it. A little emotional detachment seemed healthy. Regardless I started packing our stuff.
Yesterday we had our inspection of the mountain house and it was generally all awesome. Lots of little things that we can easily knock out ourselves and the big stuff wouldn't be a deal breaker. You know what happened, I started feeling excited and I think, we just may, actually be buying a house.
This one.
We close on or before August 15th and we'll be able to move in just before Seth starts school again. We're excited now. House party is pending.
