Full House

So hi there! Kinda went into silent mode for a bit, sorry about that. I have a good reason, though.



We bought a house! Yes, we bought a house. Yes, we'd only been looking for a couple of weeks. No, I'm not kidding. Why do people keep asking me that? LOL Ready for the full story? Well, you're going to get it anyway. It's my blog, and I'll blab if I want to. ;-)

Friday morning, I saw an update from the automatic internet search our realtor set up for us. Any time there is a new house that meets our criteria, or if one of the current houses changes status or price, we get an email with updates. Love it! It also allows you to categorize the listings (Like It, Possibility, Don't Like It) and leave notes about your thoughts on the property. When I read the description for the newly listed house, it was a definite possibility, but there were no pictures yet, so it was hard to say for sure. Our agent likes to view the listings before her clients do to see if there is anything to obviously make the house a "no" so she doesn't waste our time looking at houses that aren't suitable. Especially for this one with no pictures, she wanted to check it out first. She said she would swing by Friday afternoon, and if she thought it looked good, we could go see it over the weekend sometime. Works for me.

Imagine our surprise when the phone rang at 3:30 Friday afternoon with a call from our agent. "You have to come see this house. Right now, this afternoon, if you can. I think you're going to love it. They're also having an open house on Sunday, and I don't think it is going to last very long after that, so you'd better see it now." The house is super-close to Luke's school/daycare, so that actually worked out great; we just stopped by on our way to pick him up.

She wasn't kidding. It was a great house! Very nice white brick on the outside, larger on the inside (2400 sf) than it looks from the outside, plus a huge "partial" (1200 sf) basement. The kitchen has been completely redone, and all of the rooms have been recently painted. My only complaints are the somewhat out of date bathrooms and the lack of a garage, but otherwise, the house is wonderful. We debated over the weekend, we went to the open house on Sunday to see it again, and we made an offer Sunday night.

There was a bit of (unnecessary, IMO) drama with the back and forth, but in the end, we came to an agreement. The house checked out quite well with the inspector (even after all of the Atlanta flooding; both current house and new house are fine), and it has also been appraised for more than the sale price, so we should be good to go, barring any truly odd financial thing coming up (that I can't even imagine at this point). Closing is October 29, and we take possession 3 days later. We'll move in sometime in November (still working on that point).

When we agreed to clean up the current house and put it on the market the week after Luke's birthday party, that did *not* account for the many days spent, you know, buying a house! That definitely was not on the agenda and put a real crimp in our cleaning time. So we've put off listing the current house for another week. Yes, we bought a house before putting this one on the market, and no, purchasing the new house is not contingent on selling this house. Why does everyone keep asking that?! LOL But it will be up for sale soon enough, and if we're lucky, we'll get it sold before the end of the year. That would be nice. Keep your fingers crossed!

Currently feeling: on the move