A little piece of Texas

Van and I have been married 6 years. We have lived in two apartments, one condo, the basement of another couple's home, and two rental houses. Six addresses. The one thing we have refused to do is to buy a house. We were just never "ready" to add that responsibility to our lives, and perhaps a little commitment phobic.

This summer (middle of May), our landlord at "1214", as we refer to our first home here in Texas, decided that he wanted to sell the house. We were enjoying living there, and we had FINALLY gotten it just the way we wanted. Very homey and cozy. I had even started working on the outside patio because the inside was pretty much just where I wanted it. We thought there would be no way the house would sell.  1.) The owner wanted too much money for it. He had bought just before the recession, and so he didn't want to budge on his price. 2) Although we loved our house (and thought it was super cute), it was in a neighborhood where ALL of the houses from the outside looked almost exactly the same. I just didn't feel that there was anything that would set it apart to make it a desirable home (besides my cute staging of it, of course - haha) 3.) He had tried to sell it a couple of times before and never succeeded. But less than 6 weeks into having placed it on the market, and on my first day of an 8 day vacation in Maine, a man and his wife came for a showing and as soon as it was over called and offered cash to the owner. CASH!!??!!

Just that week I had said to Van that I thought we had "made it".  We'd been hoping that we would not have to move until at least October, and so as it was the last week in June, we figured that if anyone bought it, we'd have to wait on financing and such so we would probably have 60 days at least... maybe 90. That would have been all of July, all of August, and maybe at least some of September. But against all odds, the house not only sold that first week of July, because the buyer paid cash (and we didn't have to wait on financing), we had 30 days to be out... 8 of which were being spent in Maine.

Stress doesn't even describe those 3 and a half weeks. We had no idea what to do. Every rental we looked at wanted us to sign a year lease. (Which we definitely did not want to do!), and there was no way we had enough time to even consider buying. But as luck would have it, some family friends of our parents who had been living in San Antonio for the last 11 or 12 years, were accepting a job in North Carolina. They were moving around the same time that we were needing to be out, and they kindly offered to let us live in their home, pay the same rent we had been paying (in our much smaller) previous home, without a lease, until we could figure something out. What a God-send and blessing they were to us!

So over the last 4 months, we have been trying to figure out what to do. We didn't want to unpack and settle in our current rental house, because our friends really want to sell it, and we didn't want to be in the same position in a few months that we were in with our last house, but living amongst boxes and disorganization began to wear on our nerves rather quickly. So it would seem the best solution would be to move into a more permanent housing situation. But we didn't want to go through the hassle of moving to ANOTHER rental... what's the point in that?... (it is like that, "There's a hole in my bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza!" song - just a vicious cycle!)  So after a lot of thought, we decided to look into buying a house -- and to at least consider taking advantage of the great buyer's market/low mortgage rates currently offered.

We spent 3 full days over a period of 2 and a half weeks looking at almost 30 homes. Our realtors set us up with this automatic email/website that looked for houses in specific areas and in certain price ranges... we probably went through more than 150 homes online... marking ones we were interested in, ones that may work, and then the ones we were not interested in. It was a little daunting, and I never felt especially thrilled about any. UNTIL, I saw one on Moselle Forrest in Helotes (a suburb of San Antonio) this past Saturday. We originally were not even considering The Helotes/West San Antonio area because as we have always lived in the North/east part of San Antonio, we felt like staying in this area would be easy... moving to another part of the city is like moving to a brand new city. In a city that spans an hour from one end to the next, a move of even five or ten minutes means changing grocery stores, changing gyms, etc. etc. But, in order to not limit ourselves, we had decided to look at a few homes in this area. I loved it from first sight! I loved the layout, all of the little details, even the builder happened to be my favorite builder (we first looked at houses a year ago, but decided to wait. During that time, I decided I liked "Ryland" homes....which this house happens to be.) It was like it was meant to be...

So, we made an offer on Tuesday, and after a few counter offers and re-counter offers, last night, while I was watching the Romney/Obama debate, Van called to tell me that we had come to an agreement with the sellers... that we were about to own a little piece of Texas.

We are very excited!  It's a new phase for us... :)

And we will soon be ready for visitors!  We are suppose to be closing in 21 days... Who will be our first guests??????

I don't have any pictures available to post on this blog just yet, but if you want to see, message me or Facebook me or email me and I will send you the link to the realtor's website!  And I'll post pictures AS SOON as I have some. :)