Unsuspecting House Hunters

We became unsuspecting house hunters last month. While in route to Ft. Campbell we looked at several homes and had about 10 on the short list...anything looks good compared to Korea. Much to our dismay, when we arrived here all of those homes had already been rented. As we started the search again, we were disappointed with the quality of the available homes and scared of the locations. Yankee was such a trooper, he called 2 real estate agents and requested that they put some lists together for us. We picked up the first list and were shocked to only see 5 homes on it and 4 of them were not available until May. By the time we reached the second agents office, I had decided to wait in the car (AKA alone time was needed) while R ran in and got the listings.

Well, Yankee was taking a several minutes and then finally comes out and asks me to go in with him. I was not thrilled since I was sort of in panic mode and did not want to the "sold" to by an agent. As we looked through the homes she showed us, our favorite one was rented the night before and the other house we drove by on the way to her office. It was an immediate "Hell no"! The neighbor was on the front porch in a rocking chair, in a Moo-Moo dress and smoking, with her hair in those pink sponge rollers. There were also broken down cars on the lawn...really it was like being in a cartoon and the ultimate definition of White Trash.

Since we were unable to find suitable rental properties, the agent suggested that we consider buying a house...I thought "ha ha, funny funny". Then Yankee looks at me and says "What do you think?" I can't say what I was thinking but I think I came up with a really polite excuse. By this time moving had taken a toll and all my patience stretched thin. I think the agent could see the horror on my face and she left the office so Yankee and I could discuss it. We decided to go for it...after swearing not even 2 weeks before that we would not buy a house.

So we applied for a home loan and got approved. All those monthly payments do matter after all. We decided on a price point and were adamant that we stay on budget. We narrowed down the search and off we went look at house. The 1st was to old and needed too many updates, the 2nd was about 70%, the 3rd was about 80% and the 4th was perfect and the 5th did not compare to the 4th. So it was decided that we liked the 4th house the best and we decided to put in an offer. Houses were going so quickly and it was a Friday at 1pm so we had to get a contract by the end of the day or risked the house getting multiple contracts on Saturday. We only gave the builder 4 hours to respond (by 5pm that day) and he accepted our offer.

So in a matter of 8 hours we went from looking at rental, to deciding to buy to actually being under contract. The only downfall was that the house was not completed so we had to wait a few weeks for the builder to finish. Since there were not floors in yet, we got to pick those out, we upgraded to tile (I hate linoleum) and made sure we got the dark hard wood.

So far we have been in the house about 1 month and we just did closing last week. We are enjoying it and have been making plans for little projects.
1. blinds - are being installed on Thursday
2. fence - contract needs to be signed
3. landscaping - need to find landscaper
4. kitchen back-splash - need to make decisions
I will try to post pics of the project before and afters.

That's the story of how we bought our first house. It sort of amazes me. We had such guidance from above and just landed in the right spot.