It has been quite sometime since I last blogged. 2011 turned out to be a very busy year mostly consuming us in the purchase of our first home. We started back in March 2011 with just talking about our dream and soon found ourselves talking with a mortgage broker at our bank. At this sit down we weren't expecting to be told that we were in a great position for purchasing a home, we thought we were close, but still had some things to take care of before we felt comfortable making our dream a reality.
That same day the mortgage broker recommended a realtor, we called her and the process started. We had several houses lined up to tour by that weekend. We had been really liking this one particular neighborhood since we had moved to Canby Oregon 2 years ago and the 1st house we looked at we loved. We ended up putting in an offer right away and waited to hear back. Now this was a short-sale house which meant that it was priced low in order to get offers but the liens on the house had to be approved by the bank and they weren't willing to take the cut in price the house was listed at. Anyway several weeks went by and we were told that the bank would only entertain on offer and we got beat out by a higher offer.
As bummed as we were to hear this we pushed on telling ourselves that there are plenty of houses out there and we will find the right one for us. We pushed forward looking at many more houses and then another one came on the market in this same ideal neighborhood. We'll call it NE 19th. It too happen to be a short-sale. But despite that we decided that after going in it we liked it a lot and it fit our family. We put in an offer and waited to hear back. The back and forth process went on for about 4 months and we were getting really tired how long the process was taking. With Baby Ard #5 coming I was feeling overwhelmed. Brandon and I just happen to be looking online one day and saw another house on NE 21st that was posted as a foreclosure just blocks down and we had been wanting to see it. We were feeling committed to this NE 19th but had really forgotten what it looked like in the inside because we hadn't been in it for over 4 months. We talked with out realtor who got us into NE 21st and then into NE 19th again, this was solely to compare the 2 houses. We ended up liking and feeling like the NE 21st was the perfect fit for our family. We then made the decision to drop the NE 19th contact and offer on NE 21st. We heard back within about 4 days that NE 21st had excepted our offer and we were moving forward with a contact. 4 days before Christmas this year moved into our very 1st home.
The home buying process was literally an emotional roller coaster! The ups and downs were hell! But we made it through. If you ever want to hear all the horrible details you will have to catch me on a day when I have nothing but time on my hands to talk about it :)
Our Beautiful Home
