The House Hunt
Believe it or not, I’ve started working on my next blog book. I do one each year around the anniversary of our move-in date, which is the whole reason for this blog. I can’t believe we’re here already. Here are some pictures of the house from the year we moved in vs. this year. With the crazy weather, our garden might not look like much this year, but our lawn on the other hand is much improved from last year thanks to the TIRELESS efforts of my husband. I’m pretty lucky to have him.
For this post, I thought it might be fun to walk down memory lane and tell you about how we ended up in the yellow brick house. We purchased it in 2010, and like some of our other big purchases, we didn’t think about it for very long. It’s weird, I know. I contemplate dining room chair fabric for months, but Kyle mentions buying a house and a week later we’re looking at properties. That’s partly because the reason why Kyle wanted to buy a house was the $8,000 new home buyer’s credit. It was a great incentive, especially since our savings would take a hit after the purchase. The only catch was that it was March and we had to be under contract by April 30th to meet the deadline. If we were going to buy, we needed to do it quickly.
So we set a budget based on the amount of monthly mortgage payments we could afford. We used Dave Ramsey’s calculator because my mother is obsessed with him. Also, we put together a must-have list because they always do that on House Hunters. Our must-have list was pretty short. We wanted a 2-3 bedroom house with at least a single car garage (for the Camaro, which Kyle sold for a motorcycle before we actually moved in) and central heat and air. Not too long because I wanted to be realistic. This was our starter house, not our forever house and we wanted to live within our means.
So with our wish list in-hand, I was really excited to start the search…until I began looking at houses on the internet. We were set on living on the west side of Stillwater because it has great school districts, is close to work and just felt homier to us. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who felt this way because houses on this side of town were priced much higher than their counterparts in other areas. While there were several options under our budget, none were a great fit. Either they were in crummy neighborhoods or they didn’t have some of our must-haves. Until finally, we went to an open house and loved the property. It was a three bedroom, one bathroom ranch with big windows, an updated kitchen and a single car garage. It was on Ridge Road, and I liked the area. So we started looking into making an offer. Unfortunately, we found out that it was in the flood plain and, in order to get a loan, we would have to get flood insurance. That was actually impossible for us at the time, so this house was out of the running.
At this point we were discouraged, and I can remember visiting my parents and telling them about our troubles. I was showing Mom some of the depressing options and we ended up searching just above our budget to see what was out there. Wouldn’t you know that our house (along with a few other options) popped up! It was about 1/3 more than we wanted to spend, but we thought it was worth a shot since we were getting nowhere with the others and could hopefully negotiate.
I figured it was time for a realtor, so I asked my boss who she would recommend and she pointed us to Alane LeGrand, who was really great. She was on board with our timeline even though I know she was working around the clock with many other first-time buyers. We told her what houses we wanted to see and she set up tours for all of them. I think we toured three or four houses that day and it was pretty clear our house was the way to go. So it was time for the paperwork…
We submitted an offer, they countered, we countered again. Unfortunately they didn’t come down as much as we’d hoped, sticking to their first counter offer. At that price, we just weren't willing to pull the trigger. It was a reasonable amount for the house, but we were set on a 15-year loan and that price was still a little bit over what we were comfortable with. So we accepted defeat. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be. I would still browse internet listings, but we didn’t see any more houses we liked and it was well into April at this point. But then, all of the sudden, things changed. I was changing departments at work, which I knew had been coming for a while. I was really excited about my new position and didn’t expect it to come with a raise, but I was wrong. It just so happened that the increase in my monthly paycheck was exactly the amount we needed to make the payments doable. I was excited. I remember going out to my car, calling Kyle and then Alane. She was unsure whether they’d stick to their counter offer since it had expired, but we gave it a shot. They accepted and we had a signed offer on April 27! Just before the buzzer.
The next few weeks were a blur of paperwork, inspections and pinching ourselves because we couldn’t believe this was actually happening. In all of the excitement, I kind of forgot about the actual moving part. You know, the minor details like packing and unpacking. Luckily, moving day just happened to coincide with Memorial Day weekend, so I had an extra day off work to sort everything out.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from our first home buying experience. In the end, we ended up with a house that was more than I expected to have and as a result, rather than being here for a few years, I can see us being happy here for quite a while. Being a homeowner has been wonderful, stressful, exciting, nerve-wracking and satisfying. Overall, I recommend it. We have had so much fun making our house a home and we are looking forward to many more years here.
2010
2013
For this post, I thought it might be fun to walk down memory lane and tell you about how we ended up in the yellow brick house. We purchased it in 2010, and like some of our other big purchases, we didn’t think about it for very long. It’s weird, I know. I contemplate dining room chair fabric for months, but Kyle mentions buying a house and a week later we’re looking at properties. That’s partly because the reason why Kyle wanted to buy a house was the $8,000 new home buyer’s credit. It was a great incentive, especially since our savings would take a hit after the purchase. The only catch was that it was March and we had to be under contract by April 30th to meet the deadline. If we were going to buy, we needed to do it quickly.
So we set a budget based on the amount of monthly mortgage payments we could afford. We used Dave Ramsey’s calculator because my mother is obsessed with him. Also, we put together a must-have list because they always do that on House Hunters. Our must-have list was pretty short. We wanted a 2-3 bedroom house with at least a single car garage (for the Camaro, which Kyle sold for a motorcycle before we actually moved in) and central heat and air. Not too long because I wanted to be realistic. This was our starter house, not our forever house and we wanted to live within our means.
So with our wish list in-hand, I was really excited to start the search…until I began looking at houses on the internet. We were set on living on the west side of Stillwater because it has great school districts, is close to work and just felt homier to us. Apparently we aren’t the only ones who felt this way because houses on this side of town were priced much higher than their counterparts in other areas. While there were several options under our budget, none were a great fit. Either they were in crummy neighborhoods or they didn’t have some of our must-haves. Until finally, we went to an open house and loved the property. It was a three bedroom, one bathroom ranch with big windows, an updated kitchen and a single car garage. It was on Ridge Road, and I liked the area. So we started looking into making an offer. Unfortunately, we found out that it was in the flood plain and, in order to get a loan, we would have to get flood insurance. That was actually impossible for us at the time, so this house was out of the running.
At this point we were discouraged, and I can remember visiting my parents and telling them about our troubles. I was showing Mom some of the depressing options and we ended up searching just above our budget to see what was out there. Wouldn’t you know that our house (along with a few other options) popped up! It was about 1/3 more than we wanted to spend, but we thought it was worth a shot since we were getting nowhere with the others and could hopefully negotiate.
I figured it was time for a realtor, so I asked my boss who she would recommend and she pointed us to Alane LeGrand, who was really great. She was on board with our timeline even though I know she was working around the clock with many other first-time buyers. We told her what houses we wanted to see and she set up tours for all of them. I think we toured three or four houses that day and it was pretty clear our house was the way to go. So it was time for the paperwork…
We submitted an offer, they countered, we countered again. Unfortunately they didn’t come down as much as we’d hoped, sticking to their first counter offer. At that price, we just weren't willing to pull the trigger. It was a reasonable amount for the house, but we were set on a 15-year loan and that price was still a little bit over what we were comfortable with. So we accepted defeat. Obviously it wasn’t meant to be. I would still browse internet listings, but we didn’t see any more houses we liked and it was well into April at this point. But then, all of the sudden, things changed. I was changing departments at work, which I knew had been coming for a while. I was really excited about my new position and didn’t expect it to come with a raise, but I was wrong. It just so happened that the increase in my monthly paycheck was exactly the amount we needed to make the payments doable. I was excited. I remember going out to my car, calling Kyle and then Alane. She was unsure whether they’d stick to their counter offer since it had expired, but we gave it a shot. They accepted and we had a signed offer on April 27! Just before the buzzer.
The next few weeks were a blur of paperwork, inspections and pinching ourselves because we couldn’t believe this was actually happening. In all of the excitement, I kind of forgot about the actual moving part. You know, the minor details like packing and unpacking. Luckily, moving day just happened to coincide with Memorial Day weekend, so I had an extra day off work to sort everything out.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from our first home buying experience. In the end, we ended up with a house that was more than I expected to have and as a result, rather than being here for a few years, I can see us being happy here for quite a while. Being a homeowner has been wonderful, stressful, exciting, nerve-wracking and satisfying. Overall, I recommend it. We have had so much fun making our house a home and we are looking forward to many more years here.
I love your yellow brick home!
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