*Disclaimer: This post is incredibly long and has a lot of details that you probably don't really care about, but this is my way of remembering our house hunting process. You can just skip to the last couple paragraphs if you would like.
Our house hunting journey has been an interesting one. We knew we wanted to buy a house before the end of the year. The past 3 years have been spent getting out of debt and raising credit scores. Scrimping where we could, we carefully saved for a down payment. My father gave me a VERY generous birthday present that boosted our savings to the point that we had just enough for a down payment, allowing us to start searching months before we thought we would be able to.
We did our research and found an amazing realtor and began scouring the real estate listings. Our first outing was at the end of April and we looked at at least 6 or 7 houses in the Eagle Mountain/Lehi area. We really liked the first house we saw. It was a short sale and already had two offers, but we decided to put in an offer any way. After our realtor talked with the listing agent, we learned our offer was the lowest and so if we wanted a chance at all, we needed to increase our offer. We decided to wait it out and see if we could find anything else we liked.
After a couple of more weeks of sifting through listings, we finally found a house in Orem we thought was worth looking at. It was an older home and not attractive on the outside, but had been recently upgraded inside, including a finished basement. It met quite a few of our requirements, so we put in an offer. It was not a short sale and we had a counter back from the seller within a couple days. The more and more Kevin and I talked about the house, the less excited I got about it and the more uncomfortable I got about purchasing it. The seller seemed kind of shady, never got permits for all the changes he made and the counter was not a good one, so we decided to walk away. I felt really great about the decision and dove right back into the house search.
About a week or so later we put together another list of houses we wanted to see in Eagle Mountain. We only ended up getting into one of them, and I thought it was ok. It was smaller than we wanted and had been left filthy and so it needed a lot of work. Kevin really liked it and I could tell he was tempted to convince me we should put an offer in. Our realtor could sense what was going on, but really wanted to show us a house that was in the same area that she thought we would love. The owner's wife was sick, so they didn't want anyone to come through the house, but our realtor worked her magic and convinced them to let us come.
After just a few minutes of being in the house I had fallen in love. It was by far the best house we had seen and more than exceeded our expectations. I could truly see our family in that house. I finally felt that feeling of "This is our home." Kevin loved it too, so we sat down at the neighboring park and put together the offer. Turns out there was another offer made just 30 mins before ours was submitted, so the sellers gave us the opportunity to put in our best offer. We heard back the following evening and turns out both offers were basically the exact same. The seller countered and said who ever gets the signed addendum back to us first, gets the house. We raced to get the document signed and Kevin scanned and emailed it back within minutes. The other realtor called just after the selling agent opened our email, so we were the first to get our paperwork to them, and got the house!
We are seriously so excited to be homeowners. As sad as we are to leave our Ward of three years, it is time to move on. Kevin's commute will be significantly less and the neighborhood seems great. Hopefully no drug busts, drug overdoses, burglaries and stabbings like our current neighborhood. I will post pictures soon!
