ICYMI in my weekly newsletter or Insta-stories…
We bought a house!!
After moving 13 times in the last decade, it's a strange feeling to be a home owner. I honestly thought I'd never lay roots anywhere. So when we unexpectedly bought a house when I was like 38 weeks pregnant you could say it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster that left me feeling shocked at points. Honestly, I'm so excited to share – and we were so excited to move in – that we haven't even had a chance to take any proper photos (don't worry there's a video walk through)! I literally got up from writing this post and asked E to snap the featured photo of me – post baby spit up and tired new mom eyes and all!
Here's the story of how we unexpectedly bought a house…
Over our rental:
Y'all know we were DONE with our rental. Between no A/C for a month when I was pregnant and crappy landlords there was no way we were renewing. In fact, it became a running joke in our house that Reagan refused to live there. You see when the A/C broke the first time, we thought, “maybe we could just stay.” Then a week later, the A/C broke again… about a month later we both had thoughts of, “this isn't bad, we could just stay…” Then a few days later the main water valve broke shutting all the water off from our house… Yep. We kept joking that anytime either of us had a thought about staying, baby girl would break something or blow a lightbulb to remind us that we needed to move out!
But we couldn't afford other rentals…
While our lease didn't end until this month (March), E began vigilantly searching the interwebs for our new home in November. By December I had mostly packed up all of our things and was beginning to get a little antsy the final weeks of the year. Baby girl was still a few weeks away and I didn't have anything left to pack! Most of the rentals that checked off the majority of our wish list were trending at upwards of $4,500 a month! We were beginning to get nervous and frustrated. We couldn't stay, but where would we go?
Planning to wait until 2020 to buy a home…
For LOL's E switched his search from “renting” to “selling” and started looking to buy. He looked one morning in particular and didn't see anything. That night we went to dinner with his dad and step-mom and updated them on our current living struggle. His dad suggested we look into buying since we were getting priced out of the rental market.
Exactly a year ago, we had seriously considered buying. Everything we were finding in our price range was going to need like $400k of work to get it to where we wanted. And that's not an exaggeration, we brought a contractor with us when we were deciding whether to put an offer in and for how much. Discouraged, we had stopped looking and decided to stick to our original gut plan, which was to buy a home in 2020.
*Kismet*
Anyway, after dinner that night, E decided to check online again and see if anything new came up… and sure enough this house did. It was SO cute and checked off a ton of the things we wanted.
- At least 4 bedrooms
- More than a .3 acre of a lot
- Pool
- Open floor plan
- Photographable kitchen
- Indoor / outdoor living
He showed it to me and a few other homes and I said let's go see them. Like I said, I was getting antsy; there was nothing left to pack, it was the week between Christmas and New Years, and too cold to hit the beach/pool. I wanted to go walk through houses (a fun hobby of ours); but had no intention of buying.
Going to the house
The website paired us with a random real estate agent who we met at the house a day or two later. Walking through the house, E and I didn't really say anything to one another. Except for one moment. You see, the listing on-line only showed three of the bedrooms. When we walked into the fourth bedroom, I kid you not, baby girl started kicking up a storm. In the fourth bedroom, was the exact wallpaper I wanted for her nursery. I couldn't help myself but say, “Look! It's Reagan!” After all, we had been constantly joking she was breaking everything in our rental and knew exactly where she wanted to live…
Other than that though, we didn't say a word. In fact, I think we were in and out in about 10 minutes. Once we got in the driveway we both looked at each other and said a number. The exact same number. And agreed we wouldn't pay a dollar more. If it was meant to be our home, it would be at the price and we were perfectly willing to walk away. Again, we weren't really looking, so this was a very pleasant surprise.
A few days later we went back to the house with his family. We had taken them to a couple of homes a year earlier that were fairly similar. This one needed much less work though; but my concerns about this house and the others remained the same: we'd outgrow it before we knew it. E and I both work from home, and need a lot of space between us, and now kids.
Simple logic strikes
Both sets of his parents fell in love with the house. I told his step dad we were still considering some things out west, and he just looked at me and said, “You guys love the beach, why would you go out there?” and with that, I finally put my hesitations aside. Having not lived more than a mile from the beach the last seven years, I really couldn't imagine going out west where it'd take us 35-40 minutes to get to the beach. This house is only 2.5 miles from the beach.
Putting an offer in
So with that, we told our agent we wanted to put an offer in. Less than a week after we saw it. The house was listed a bit overpriced for the area and our offer was quite a bit under what they asked for. We had a feeling they were getting a divorce since the agent said they were downsizing and would leave furniture for the right price. So we knew what our max number was and agreed not to go above it. Again, if it was meant to be ours it would.
At this point, I'm 39 weeks pregnant. Timelines of offers and counter-offers kind of went out the window as the sellers were traveling. My anxiety was creeping up because, hello, 39 weeks pregnant! All of the sudden we were doing the inspection two days before my original due date. Then a few days later we had to bring in a specialist to check the pool, since the general inspection suspected there was a leak, and the pool inspection confirmed it.
Negotiating
The next week we spent in frustrating negotiations (or non-negotiations) over the house. They wouldn't come down or budge on anything that turned up in the inspection. We were at our number so we had to decide: do we walk or do we carry the weight of the issues? Now we are at my second due date. My emotions were starting to fly high. They offered us the furniture I originally requested in our initial offer. Ultimately, I decided my hormones were too off the charts, and I needed to let E make the call. It seemed like the more time that went between being in the house, the more easily I could walk away from it. Then every time we'd go by the house, I'd remember why I wanted it. So I trusted that my earlier, less pregnant self, and husband knew what was best.
So moving into 41 weeks pregnant, I thought the house stuff is behind us, baby girl will definitely arrive! And she did… just a little later than expected, which you can read about here.
The waiting game
The first few weeks home with our baby girl in the old rental were rough. Living on three stories while recovering is no joke. And of course, our neighbors across the way, who don't live there, had friends staying there the entire month. We don't have curtains on those glass doors and neither do they (so we basically just stare in each others units). I was basically a nudist at that point with breastfeeding, so that was fun. Oh and not to mention that whenever people are in that unit, our dog looses his mind barking at them, again fun times! So that last month definitely dragged out.
Saying good-bye to the old
Finally, the last weekend in our old place, the people had left. We had one weekend of peace to say goodbye to our old townhouse. A home that allowed us to grow. A home we moved into knowing we'd have a baby there. A place we left earlier than expected (I really thought we'd be there for the first 1-2 years of a babies life when we moved in).
Moving on up
But alas, we moved on for something better. We moved in a few days before baby girl turned 6 weeks and a few days into our new home she clocked her first seven hour night sleep! Tucker's been barking wayyy less. In fact, this city dog isn't used to how quiet our almost half-acre is that he picked a fight with some trees the first few days. As for E and I, well there's a ton of work to be done. E had to leave the country for a few days our first week in the house so we've been doing our best between running our own companies, a new baby, a new home, and well just life!
We totally watched Tidying Up on Netflix and introduced ourselves to the home. Our intentions for the home are to fill it with life and love. To take care of it and shower it with laughter and joy as we grow our family and ourselves in it. We plan to take care of it and nurture it just like another member of the family and feel so blessed to be here.
Anddd if you want a tour of the new house, check it out below!
And make sure you subscribe to my YouTube channel for more home and baby updates! Also, p.s. sorry for the audio quality of the video, it was windy outside and I didn't realize my hand covered the mic for a brief moment there! #NewYoutuberProblems
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