I apologize in advance for the jumble that I'm sure this post will become. My need to write down/document what has been going on over the last few months pressed me this morning, so much so that I had to decline "cuddle time" with my hubby. At any rate, I think getting everything down will do me some good. So, here it goes:
October 2014 - Hubby and I began scouring realtor sites for a new home. Three year sentence would be up in December and we were getting excited about finding a home. The short sale would be history and we would, again, have a clean slate to start. We're using our same realtor and began communicating with him again. (A little back history - he hooked us up with a new loan officer last spring, in order to get us prepared for the up coming search. We would be trying a VA loan this time and needed to make sure all of our ducks were in a row. The new loan officer, "J", kept us informed and let us know that, indeed, we would be able to make our purchase after December 13th).
By the end of October, we pretty much knew what we liked and what we didn't like. Our sites were to stay in our current city, but we're open to the surrounding cities (there are seven of them). The more we looked, the more excited we became. Hubby would double-check and double-check about the time frame and we were feeling confident that everything would happen as it should.
Fast forward to November and our relator is telling us he's concerned about our loan officer. He was slated to provide a very straight forward mortgage for a couple and was taking an eternity to do so. Our relator then says that our loan officer had endured issues with prescription addiction in the past and was showing the same signs now as he had then.
"Okay. We're done," we let him know straight away. He quickly found us a new finance company and we began gathering our paperwork for the new contact.
One week before Thanksgiving, the new loan officer "N" let us know that we had not needed to wait three years, only two. Nothing to do but feel the frustration of this news, then move forward.
December 2014 - hubby and I begin to really search for properties. I felt good about the fact that we want a lot of the same things; gourmet kitchen, open floor plan, hardwood/laminate floors, master suite with a large en-suite, lots of windows, a completed basement (if at all possible) and an easy maintenance yard.
Winter is a difficult time to house hunt but we were able to see lots of homes. We saw
everything; weird floor plans with strange rooms, carpet everywhere, difficult landscaping, out dated everything, small rooms, etc.... We also saw lots of wonderful things - many homes coming quite close to what we saw as ideal. In early December, we found a home (not in our current city) that had wall to wall hardwood floors, an amazing kitchen, a deep garage, beautiful, up-dated bathrooms and bedrooms, a completed basement with a secondary kitchen along with dual fireplaces. Finally, the backyard was an entertainer's dream, with a huge deck and patio with a place for a hot-tub.
We had our realtor inquire and an offer had already been made, by the time my hubby felt comfortable enough to say he truly liked this house. Ugh! I talked with him about being more swift with his decision making in the future, since the buyer's market is so competitive. We tucked our tails between our legs and went back to the drawing board.
By the week before Christmas, we felt we'd found the home for us (after looking at four homes, then two after). We worked with our realtor to put in an offer, feeling confident that it would be accepted (of course it would! It had been on the market for over 70 days. We'd even met the owner!). Dang if someone else didn't put in an offer at the same time and snatch it from us. The realtor and my hubby think that the owner's realtor is working "both sides" (the owner's realtor is a relative and the idea is that she found someone to buy his house, so that she can gain commission on the selling
and the buying of the property. It isn't illegal but dang if it isn't frustrating). We requested that our realtor put us in as a back up offer. Back to the drawing board we went.
Friday, January second, we set out on another house hunt. This time, six houses were on the list; all in the city in which we currently live. We saw two homes we loved and put an offer into the one with the 1/2 acre yard and amazing location. Our realtor calls us the next day to say that four offers had come in, with one being slightly better than ours. It just kills to have this happen a third time, but we calmly submitted another back-up offer. What to do, but wait on the Lord...
We have submitted our intent not to renew our lease, so there is now a clock ticking loudly in the background. I feel compelled to watch "The Secret" again and gain my bearings on the laws of attraction. My thoughts are all over and I'm anxious to find what is best for our family. Will we find what is right for us? Will everything fall into place? I certainly don't want to settle. All we can do now is pray, pray, pray.
