Our First House!!!

So we can't say it's officially ours, but we settled on a price and the contract is being signed by the seller tonight, so I'm being optimistic and saying it's ours when Hans says that it isn't quite yet. Same difference... I've been bad about not getting my hopes up on this house from the beginnings, so why start now? I'm convinced God prepared and reserved it for us, so why should I doubt...?

Anyway, here's the scoop. We'd been on the official adventure of house hunting for all of two weeks when we found our future house. We'd started looking on the West side because we currently live over there and like the area. We've found that houses are being over priced due to the fact that interest rates are so low, that people mostly focus on monthly payments instead of total price of the home. We, however, were very concerned about the total sum of the home. Needless to say that the houses in our price range have been lacking in quality and would need a lot of work, at least on the West side. Our favorites seemed to range a little too high on the total sum and we weren't sure we could talk anyone down to a comfortable price. So this was our situation after our first weekend of house hunting and internet real estate perusing.

About this time, our good friends Michelle and Jonathan began working on the beautiful house they had purchased in College Hill. Hans was out of town at a teacher training and my mother so graciously stayed with me in his absence. We stopped by Michelle and Jonathan's house to see how it was coming along, and I felt a twinge of jealousy. Not a "They have a house and we don't" jealousy or a bad jealousy, but more of a reminder that I had always wanted a bungalow in College Hill when we lived in the duplex there. In our logical planning for a house, we had crossed College Hill off our list because of the maintenance and the age and the remodeling that would most assuredly be required. So we didn't look there. Well, after a slightly emotional phone conversation, we decided that we would at least look at some houses in College Hill, seeing as we weren't having much luck on the West side, anyway.

So we saw one on Chatfield Place that was for sale in our price range. The listing sounded great, but said it didn't have laundry facilities, but we figured that had to have been wrong. So we asked our amazing realtor Maria if we could stop by there the next weekend. So this is what we found (copy and paste this address or go to my facebook album):

http://www.facebook.com/elly.widener?ref=profile#/album.php?aid=2061734&id=62902992

We got it about $6,000 less than the seller was asking, with him paying closing costs and warranty. It was also about $12,000 less than our maximum possible offer, so we are so incredibly blessed!! It is four bed, two bath, one car (could possibly fit both) garage, built in 1925, 1568 square feet, main floor laundry, top floor master bed/bath, hardwood floors in living/dining room. You can see the rest in the photos. There won't be any wall paper removal except in the living room and dining room, so that's great (one of the reasons we weren't wanting a College Hill house because we thought it would take too much work). All of the other rooms will be good to go for now, but we'll probably paint once we have a kiddo (later). This house is four blocks from Hans' parents and in between them and his brother's house. Now we can actually have all of THEM over for dinner!!! It also has room enough to have my parents and sisters come and stay in their own room and have a separate bathroom and everything!!!

We found out the day we were setting up the offer that the seller had originally put it up for sell 8/28/08 for $15,000 more than he was asking this time. This was a couple of months before the whole economic/real estate crisis, as well as before the $8,000 tax credit for new home buyers. God reserved this house through all of that, and no one bought it. The seller took it off the market sometime after that and put it back on the market 5/12/09, so it had been on the market about 68 days when we looked at it the first time. The first time we looked at it, we were wondering what was wrong if it had been on the market for so short a time. But we still haven't found anything and I am convinced that God hid it from everyone else so we could buy it almost a year after the original offering date. We still have inspections to do next week, but as far as we can tell, it is in excellent shape for being 84 years old. We'll have a structural engineer look at it, and have the inspector check for mold (Hans is very allergic), so there's still time to find things to improve (which we will...).

So that's how things are going! We are very excited and can't wait to fix it to our liking and move in! When we do, we're going to have a huge party and have people over all the time!!!! Like, all the time. Please, invite yourself over for dinner whenever!!! Here are a few pictures of it: