WE FINALLY BOUGHT A HOUSE!! Ahhhh it feels so good to finally be able to say that. It was only a year and eight month's journey! Geez...haha. We have been in the works of signing papers and such for the last month and a half, but after all that we have been through with this house hunting process, I didn't want to share the news until it was official. We have been technically moved in and living here for the last week and a half, but I have had NO time to blog. While in the process of moving in and unpacking everything, I had a paper to write, 4 big assignments and a huge essay midterm that I have to get a B or higher on to pass. EEK! So much work and stress, but it's all worth it! Now I am finally living in a beautiful home that me and Jordan plan on raising our future family in for a very long time. It took forever to find the right house, but it was worth the wait. I am so glad that none of the other houses worked out because this one just feels like home. Our duplex is already strange to us, we just LOVE our new home!!
Anyway, before I get to posting pictures, my mom was telling me I should document our house hunting experience because as she put it, it was the most unique experience she's ever heard of. Everyone has been saying, "now's the time to buy! It's a buyer's market!" Yeah...about that. More like the market from hell!! haha Just a tip for future home buyers, don't even bother looking at shortsales or bank owned properties..at least if you live in Utah. What a horrible experience. I know that you are probably thinking that that would be the way to go right now, especially in this economy...WRONG. Well, here in Utah anyway. I can't speak for anywhere else. :) Banks here in Utah are absolutely a nightmare to work with and they TAKE FOREVER. For example, we would put an offer in on a shortsale home, and a MONTH later we would here back NO, we want more money. Yay... So anyway, it took us a year and a few months to figure out that that was not the way to go. We really wanted to be able to get that tax credit (now they've extended it! wahoo for everyone still house hunting!), so we decided the heck with shortsales, we were going to go with privately owned. Once we did that, everything was in motion so quickly. We heard back from the previous owner of our current house within 24 hours and negotiated a price within 48 hours and closed three weeks later. Now that's the way to do it! For my mom, and a good laugh for me (now anyway, at the time I was pissed haha), here is our story:
We started house hunting April 2008 a couple months before we got married because we were hoping to find a house BEFORE we got married so we could be all settled in and ready to go. (we had no idea what was ahead of us) About a week before we got married and the house hunting was going no where, we put a deposit on an apartment, then the next day, our duplex opened up and was available, so we moved in there instead. It was a crazy week. We were grateful for the duplex because it was so much bigger than the apartment we were going to rent and cheaper too! That was a blessing. We moved all our stuff in the day before the wedding. Whew! After we moved into the duplex, we immediately started house hunting again (so we kept half our stuff in boxes because what's the point of unboxing everything just to move again? It was like Christmas unboxing all of my stuff after almost years of not seeing half of it!). Our first house we put an offer on was a shortsale (in fact, all the homes were shortsales until the last two). We put the highest offer in so that we would beat everyone else....and never even heard back. Strange. So a month of waiting later, we gave up on that one and started looking again. The second house we put an offer in had train tracks right smack behind the house but it was a cute house so we were willing to buy it for the right price. The bank said they wouldn't take under a certain amount and we declined. The next day I saw that very house listed on the website for what we had offered originally. Back stabbing banks. haha I'm not really upset anymore, but it was pretty upsetting at the time! Just not meant to be! Our third offer was on a very nice home that we actually liked a lot, so we put the offer on it, there were no other offers so we were sitting pretty. Long story short, it was listed at X price, we offered at Y price, a little lower. Well, three weeks LATER, the bank comes back and says they won't even consider going lower than Z price which was higher than X the listing price!!! What the crap??? It was listed lower than the bank would even take for it. That's just bad business! haha The fourth home we put an offer on was a little smaller than we were looking for, but so stinkin cute and it was listed at a price lower than we had been looking at too. Nice! So we offered, but then someone started offering as well, playing the back and forth game with us and we said screw it. Oh well. The fifth house, we almost bought. It was privately owned so things moved quickly with this home also! It was in Murray, GREAT location for us, but an older home. The owner accepted our offer, and we ordered the home inspection. Well, that ended up bad. So we pulled out. And it was back to looking AGAIN. Well, I just happened to be browsing the internet one day and found this super cute house in West Jordan. I had my grandpa take me and Jordan over to see it that night and we fell in love instantly. And now we are living in it! It had EVERYTHING we were looking for and more! It was perfect. Heavenly Father was watching over us through this whole experience and all these weird things that happened to us with the previous houses we had put offers on, it was his way of saying NOPE! Not the right one! haha Funny how things work out huh? This was a really trying experience for us and there were plenty of tears, but it was really good for us also. It definitely taught us patience and that everything works in God's time. My best friend Ashley kept telling me that, and I would say screw that! But it was true. Ashley was right. :) That was obviously something that I needed to learn better and I did. This experience also taught me and Jordan more about each other, imagine that! We had to learn to work together in a whole new situation and it was great! We really learned a lot and are even closer now that this experience is all over with. We are so blessed and grateful for all that we have.
Now for the pictures! I wanted to post a couple of pictures from the duplex as well as a few of the new house just to compare! Me and Ashley thought it would be fun! :)
(Here's the duplex, it was sad to leave it because it was our first place together as a married couple! And we had some great times there too! We will miss the street as well.)
(me and Jordan moving...I know I look absolutely awful in this picture and it's because I felt awful! I picked up a nasty cold, that ended up lasting 2 1/2 weeks, the day before we started moving. My dad thought it was swine flu at first because I was so bad that first week. Turns out it wasn't, but it was horrible just the same!)
(Elise came over to help me box some stuff up one day, thanks lise!)
(After the first day of packing, after a long hard day at work too.)
(Sadie had no idea what was going on, she was weirded out with everything in boxes.)
(After the second day of packing.)
(Duplex family room, all emptied out.)
(Duplex kitchen)
(Sadie being the cutest helper ever!)
(And finally the new house!!! Isn't it cute?)
(The entryway.)
(The living room right as you walk in the front door.)
(Downstairs is the family room.)
(Family room again)
(The laundry room)
(Bathroom)
(And the office with my diploma finally up on a wall! yay!)
(Upstairs is the kitchen--my new fridge is getting delivered today wahoo!)
(Dining area)
(Sadie showing us the guest bedroom. There is also another bedroom next to this, but it's not set up yet, it's going to be our exersize room for now.)
(Guest bathroom)
(and the Master bedroom)
(Master bathroom, my favorite room in the house.) :)
(And lastly, the backyard and patio. Love it!)
(Jordan playing with Sadie in the backyard.)
(A backyard fit for a dog! Finally Sadie has a yard to play in and she loves it!)
We are so grateful to have found this house for us and our future family. We hope to live here for a very long time (we are not anxious to move again haha). Me and Jordan are proud of our beautiful home and are going to continue to take the best care we can of it. We have worked very hard to get this far and will keep working our butts off to keep it that way. :) For those of you who have been waiting forever to see pictures, here you go!
As for other updates, we have no Halloween pictures this year because we didn't celebrate it! We were MOVING! Yay! We moved in officially on Halloween day. Now we'll always remember it! We felt so bad too because we had like 5 or 6 trick or treaters in our new neighborhood and had nothing to give them! So we finally got some time to run to the store to get some candy, but by the time we got back with it, we only had two trick or treaters. Sad. But we've been living on candy for the last week! haha! And as for this deadly cold that I've had, I'm FINALLY getting better. There was a week there that I had literally no signs of getting better at all. It made moving, work, and school very difficult, but I still did it thank goodness. It's funny how as you get older, you just don't have time to be sick. I just had to keep on plugging away! I think part of the reason it lasted so long though was because I over-worked myself. The day we got the keys to move in, Jordan was at work, so me and my mom went and got the moving truck and started moving ourselves, just the two of us. We had a good 3/4 of the stuff moved into the new house by the time Jordan even got off work. My mom helped me out SO much. I am so grateful for her and that she was here to help me. She has done by far the most work in all of this process, besides me and Jordan of course. We had help from a few really awesome friends too and family of course (thank you guys SO much!), but my mom did the most! She has been coming over to help me unbox stuff and hang things on the walls too. She is the greatest. I told her I'm taking her to go get massages when this is all done! We deserve it! :)
Anyway, this was a super long post, but I wanted to make sure to get all those pictures up for everyone who's been waiting so patiently to see them! And also, it's going to be a while before I can post again because I have my first final coming up! Wish me luck! Hope everyone has a fabulous day!
