(May 23, 2012)
We bought a new house today.
It is lovely. It is ours. It happened at lightning speed. All three tremendous blessings.
Background: I had my heart set on another house, House A. A bigger house, closer to our current home and the type of layout I'd wanted; a 'box' house with 5 ginormous bedrooms upstairs and 2 more in the basement and ample rooms for other entertainment that I'd have to buy more furniture to fill it. It was located within the Falcon Ridge Elementary school boundaries so no more carpooling. As with any existing home purchase we had a list of To-Do Projects like an entire yard overhaul and replacing the in-excellent-condition-carpet-but-it's-RED! (the carpet padding was oooh so plush) and a few other things. It was a short sale, within our price range, and I thought that was that.
Then, one Thursday night I picked up the iPad as I climbed into bed and saw a new house just added late in the day: House B. We'd learned early that if you snooze you lose, but I wasn't hooked and wanted to wait until we had our list of houses for Saturday morning. Saturday arrived and started with tour #2 through House A - with all the kids this time - and I was picking out paint colors while they picked out their bedrooms and plotted how to get lost playing Hide and Seek. We were told time was short at House B, and we had planned to tour other houses nearby there as well, so off to House B we drove. It was located in Daybreak (in South Jordan) where the homes aren't stucco like most other developments. The homes are all colors of the rainbow and a more craftsman/San Fransisco-looking style (aka low maintenance). Our agent was checking his phone as we walked up to the home, and even before entering he told us they were taking best offers before 5:00 pm today. It was noon. Oh, and the other homes we'd planned to look at today were not available for showings. The home had it's own charm and although the layout was different than I thought would appeal to me, I liked it. It was clean, no real urgent projects other than getting the basement completed, a huge park/spashpool was just down the street, and the elementary school around the corner. We later learned it was a 2nd home for the owners and not used much. I didn't have the "This is it!" feeling as we left, but not having any more houses to look at that day made the Crunch Time, crunch time! It was also a short sale, within our price range, and a desirable area for resale. Stuart put in an offer at 4:00 pm, and as we started eating dinner at 7:00 pm the phone rang. Stuart sat across from me at the table, looked at me, hung up, "They accepted our offer." That was it.
The house hadn't been on the market 48 hours and we got it!
The paperwork sailed through quickly and didn't take the months we expected.
We signed some papers and they gave us some keys.
After saving and saving....and saving and saving some more...we closed on our new house today!
I can't believe we are going to live here:
