In January 2010, Joe and I bought our first condo--it was a short sale that we were in a bidding war with multiple families over.. It was a fully refurbished condo-conversion, complete with brand new carpet, granite and cherry wood cabinets in both the kitchen and bathroom, stainless steel appliances, crown molding, and fresh paint. Oh yeah--and one of the biggest backyards in the complex. It was amazing--such a beautiful condo--but such a pain in the butt to get. Short sales are anything but short--they take FOREVER to get processed. From us putting in the offer and it getting accepted, it took about 9 months for escrow to close. Those 9 months were a roller coaster of emotions--"the HOA dues are past due so we have to wait for the current owner to bring it to current.." "it might be going to foreclosure, and then we'll have to start all over.." ...it was awful. One day we would be thinking that we'd be homeowners, and the next we would be worried that we wouldn't even get the place. We weren't in any rush to buy, so waiting 9 months to close escrow wasn't an issue. We never got a concrete closing date, so we were living out of boxes for about a month--which meant that I couldn't decorate for the holidays (huge deal for me). We finally closed escrow on January 6, 2010--and we were elated. I was so excited to move into our tiny two bedroom, one bathroom, 900-square foot condo. It was the perfect size for our family.. until I got pregnant with Madison.
We had debated moving to a bigger place, moving out of state, or even moving across the country, but nothing ever came of that--until one day when a real estate agent knocked on my door and told me that he had a client interested in buying my condo and asked if I had thought about selling it. I told him that Joe and I had been debating it but were waiting for some kind of sign.. well, if this wasn't a sign--then I don't know what is! He told me that his client was on her way over and asked if I cared if she took a look around--and since we all know my house is always immaculate, I told him that would be fine. She looked around but decided that she like how the backyard slightly sloped, so she passed. Joe and I decided that we would list our condo and just see what happened. If we got an interested buyer--great, but if not, we wouldn't stress about it. We listed our condo, then left for a Vegas vacation. We got a call from our agent that a man wanted to come and look at our place, and we were so excited. Over the course of our vacation, that man visited our condo twice, and by the time we came home he had put an offer on the table. We negotiated the price and finally opened escrow--we were SO excited.. until 3 weeks in and he pulled his offer off the table: apparently he didn't think the condo would be big enough to fit all of his furniture--him, as a single man, where a family of four had been living--wouldn't have been able to fit. Hmm.. ooookay? I was extremely disappointed -we had grown out of this condo; we desperately needed a bigger house. A week after he pulled his offer off of the table, he put it back on. We were getting all of the paperwork ready to open escrow (again), and he decided that he wanted to take his offer back off of the table. Are you kidding me?! What a joke. I was livid. It was such a roller coaster--we decided that if this guy wanted to "put his offer back up" again, we would decline it. We didn't need this stress--we had a 2 year old and an 8-month-old--and this guy was just ridiculous. A few weeks after all of this took place, a single mom came through our condo and fell in love: she had a 2-year-old son, and our kid's room had a Finding Nemo mural painted throughout it (my mother-in-law is an amazing artist and did such a beautiful job on the mural). This woman said that she loved the condo and her son fell in love with "his bedroom." We ended up opening escrow with her and finding ourselves in a rush to find a house.
I'll never forget the Sunday we went out with our real estate agent and looked at THIRTEEN different houses. THIRTEEN. (Our agent was such a trooper!) ...It was such an exhausting day--and I was so stressed out. I told her that we HAD to find a house that day--that we wouldn't be going out and looking at more houses. That was such an interesting adventure. I brought my camera along and took pictures of literally EVERYTHING because I knew that I wouldn't be able to remember anything from any of the houses after looking at so many. We were able to weed out some houses pretty quickly--whether it was from driving around the neighborhood and deciding we didn't like it, or from taking one step in the house, taking one look around and then walking right back out--we ended up with our top three houses. The first one, my favorite, was a company-owned house (a company bought it and flipped it), and because of that, they had some weird requirements for buying it that we didn't want to comply with--so that one was out. Then it was between our current house and another house (it was labeled as a 'townhouse' but was completely by itself--no shared walls). The "townhouse" also had weird requirements for buying it (just our luck), so our last chance was with this house. This house was Joe's favorite--from the minute he saw the listing he loved it--but I needed to be sold on it. The entire house is tile--downstairs, the stairs, upstairs hallway--and the only rooms that have carpet are the two kids rooms. We ended up in a bidding war with another family over it, and we didn't think we had a chance of getting it--until they accepted our offer! We were SO excited--we would be going from a 2-bedroom, 900 square foot condo to a 4-bedroom, 2200 square foot house. We would actually have room to LIVE! The owners were both an airplane pilot and a flight attendant, so they needed an extra week after closing escrow to move--just to make sure they were in town to actually move. That posed a problem: it left us with a 3-week gap between closing escrow on our condo and having to move out and closing escrow on our house and getting to move in. Thankfully I have amazing parents who have a huge house and let us move in with them for those three weeks so that we wouldn't have to live out of a hotel.
Packing up your house is stressful, but packing up your house and trying to figure out that stuff that you'll need to keep out to use for the next 3 weeks is even more stressful--but I did it. My brother-in-law got us a great deal on a Pack Rat moving/storage bin, and on the closing date of of condo, one of those huge storage boxes got delivered right outside my front door. Out of all the stress we had been through throughout this entire process, the actual act of moving was not one of them. It was the easiest move we had ever had. We literally packed up that storage box, locked it up, and the Pack Rat company came and took it away. They stored it at their warehouse for us for those three weeks, and on the day we closed escrow on our house, it was there sitting on my driveway waiting for us to unpack it. It was amazing. We finally had our house and could plant our roots. Our kids would have a huge backyard to run around in, and we had a house big enough for us to grow up into.
I love this house. I never want to move ever again--mainly because the stress of having to sell this place and buy a new one would be the death of me--but this is our home now.
Moral of the story: If you aren't in any rush at all to buy a place, look for short sales. You can get AMAZING deals on them (the short sale condo that we bought originally sold for $350,000--we bought it for $150,000). They take forever, but if you have the time--go for it. If you are on a time crunch, like when we sold the condo, then only look for regular sale or foreclosed homes (apparently foreclosed homes sell just like a regular sale?).
TIP: When looking through houses, try as hard as you can to pay attention to the TINY details. Those are always the ones to come back any bite you in the butt. When we moved into our house, we realized that not a single door in the house had a doorstop--which meant that we had to go out and buy them and put them in. Those don't cost much, but it was still more money out of our pocket. Take a camera with you and take pictures of everything--cause once you're in escrow, you're gonna want to look at those pictures over and over and over--deciding where you'll put this and where you'll put that. Its much easier to do if you have a visual right in front of you ;).
We had debated moving to a bigger place, moving out of state, or even moving across the country, but nothing ever came of that--until one day when a real estate agent knocked on my door and told me that he had a client interested in buying my condo and asked if I had thought about selling it. I told him that Joe and I had been debating it but were waiting for some kind of sign.. well, if this wasn't a sign--then I don't know what is! He told me that his client was on her way over and asked if I cared if she took a look around--and since we all know my house is always immaculate, I told him that would be fine. She looked around but decided that she like how the backyard slightly sloped, so she passed. Joe and I decided that we would list our condo and just see what happened. If we got an interested buyer--great, but if not, we wouldn't stress about it. We listed our condo, then left for a Vegas vacation. We got a call from our agent that a man wanted to come and look at our place, and we were so excited. Over the course of our vacation, that man visited our condo twice, and by the time we came home he had put an offer on the table. We negotiated the price and finally opened escrow--we were SO excited.. until 3 weeks in and he pulled his offer off the table: apparently he didn't think the condo would be big enough to fit all of his furniture--him, as a single man, where a family of four had been living--wouldn't have been able to fit. Hmm.. ooookay? I was extremely disappointed -we had grown out of this condo; we desperately needed a bigger house. A week after he pulled his offer off of the table, he put it back on. We were getting all of the paperwork ready to open escrow (again), and he decided that he wanted to take his offer back off of the table. Are you kidding me?! What a joke. I was livid. It was such a roller coaster--we decided that if this guy wanted to "put his offer back up" again, we would decline it. We didn't need this stress--we had a 2 year old and an 8-month-old--and this guy was just ridiculous. A few weeks after all of this took place, a single mom came through our condo and fell in love: she had a 2-year-old son, and our kid's room had a Finding Nemo mural painted throughout it (my mother-in-law is an amazing artist and did such a beautiful job on the mural). This woman said that she loved the condo and her son fell in love with "his bedroom." We ended up opening escrow with her and finding ourselves in a rush to find a house.
I'll never forget the Sunday we went out with our real estate agent and looked at THIRTEEN different houses. THIRTEEN. (Our agent was such a trooper!) ...It was such an exhausting day--and I was so stressed out. I told her that we HAD to find a house that day--that we wouldn't be going out and looking at more houses. That was such an interesting adventure. I brought my camera along and took pictures of literally EVERYTHING because I knew that I wouldn't be able to remember anything from any of the houses after looking at so many. We were able to weed out some houses pretty quickly--whether it was from driving around the neighborhood and deciding we didn't like it, or from taking one step in the house, taking one look around and then walking right back out--we ended up with our top three houses. The first one, my favorite, was a company-owned house (a company bought it and flipped it), and because of that, they had some weird requirements for buying it that we didn't want to comply with--so that one was out. Then it was between our current house and another house (it was labeled as a 'townhouse' but was completely by itself--no shared walls). The "townhouse" also had weird requirements for buying it (just our luck), so our last chance was with this house. This house was Joe's favorite--from the minute he saw the listing he loved it--but I needed to be sold on it. The entire house is tile--downstairs, the stairs, upstairs hallway--and the only rooms that have carpet are the two kids rooms. We ended up in a bidding war with another family over it, and we didn't think we had a chance of getting it--until they accepted our offer! We were SO excited--we would be going from a 2-bedroom, 900 square foot condo to a 4-bedroom, 2200 square foot house. We would actually have room to LIVE! The owners were both an airplane pilot and a flight attendant, so they needed an extra week after closing escrow to move--just to make sure they were in town to actually move. That posed a problem: it left us with a 3-week gap between closing escrow on our condo and having to move out and closing escrow on our house and getting to move in. Thankfully I have amazing parents who have a huge house and let us move in with them for those three weeks so that we wouldn't have to live out of a hotel.
Packing up your house is stressful, but packing up your house and trying to figure out that stuff that you'll need to keep out to use for the next 3 weeks is even more stressful--but I did it. My brother-in-law got us a great deal on a Pack Rat moving/storage bin, and on the closing date of of condo, one of those huge storage boxes got delivered right outside my front door. Out of all the stress we had been through throughout this entire process, the actual act of moving was not one of them. It was the easiest move we had ever had. We literally packed up that storage box, locked it up, and the Pack Rat company came and took it away. They stored it at their warehouse for us for those three weeks, and on the day we closed escrow on our house, it was there sitting on my driveway waiting for us to unpack it. It was amazing. We finally had our house and could plant our roots. Our kids would have a huge backyard to run around in, and we had a house big enough for us to grow up into.
I love this house. I never want to move ever again--mainly because the stress of having to sell this place and buy a new one would be the death of me--but this is our home now.
Moral of the story: If you aren't in any rush at all to buy a place, look for short sales. You can get AMAZING deals on them (the short sale condo that we bought originally sold for $350,000--we bought it for $150,000). They take forever, but if you have the time--go for it. If you are on a time crunch, like when we sold the condo, then only look for regular sale or foreclosed homes (apparently foreclosed homes sell just like a regular sale?).
TIP: When looking through houses, try as hard as you can to pay attention to the TINY details. Those are always the ones to come back any bite you in the butt. When we moved into our house, we realized that not a single door in the house had a doorstop--which meant that we had to go out and buy them and put them in. Those don't cost much, but it was still more money out of our pocket. Take a camera with you and take pictures of everything--cause once you're in escrow, you're gonna want to look at those pictures over and over and over--deciding where you'll put this and where you'll put that. Its much easier to do if you have a visual right in front of you ;).
Thanks, Kristen! It was so much fun painting the mural while Maverick popped in and out to check on the progress saying "thank you for fishees, Gogo!" So adorable!
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