On December 26, Steve and I went to see a mortgage lender. It was the beginning of a wild, crazy and yet oddly coincidental ride. Are you ready?
We went to the lender (Dan) to see what we needed to do to buy a house. We figured it would be a several month adventure since we would need to save money and then go through the process of finding a house. Because I wanted to keep our payment under a $1000 per month, we found out we needed to look for a home less than $140,000. We also found out we qualified for down payment assistance so all we needed were closing costs and inspection fees. So I asked the question, "so we need to save money before we start looking". Dan said no, we could start right away. We could always ask for the seller to pay closing costs, if we did find a house and if they said no, we would keep looking and save. The more money we saved the more "power" we would have. So Dan gave us a name of a Realtor and even said he would call the Realtor, Jimmy, for us. We were not home for very long from that meeting when we got the call from from Jimmy.
Jimmy already knew what Dan knew. We had no money saved but we were looking at houses under $140,000. He found out what we wanted: three bedrooms and 2 bathrooms and we began receiving e-mails of different houses that met those requirements. Most of the houses in the e-mails had pictures of the outside and inside of the house and based on what we saw we picked a few that we wanted to look at.
The first few houses we saw was on Friday, December 29th. We stayed in the North East area at first. But each house we looked at always had something wrong with it. One house had no dining room and what I would consider a dining room was called a bedroom (because it had a closet) even though it had a door into the kitchen and a door to the living room. Another house was too small. Another the driveway and garage's cement floor was all cracked up. One house we were interested in had a large living area, dining room and a den and it was very open, which was one of the things I wanted. I liked it but at the same time, I didn't. I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe because I had a different idea in mind? So we kept looking. I mentioned to Jimmy how hard it was to find something I liked. He made the statement, " When you find the house that was meant for you, you will know it". It made me think of having the Spirit confirm what is right.
Jimmy told us he could take us to houses that we found in Oildale on Monday, December 31. So the first house we went to, we were not able to go in and see. I was already not too sure about it since the neighborhood didn't look all that great and most of the garage had been used to build another room. So on to the next house. We went into the next house. And it happened. I had not walked in more than three steps when I knew that this was the house. I couldn't see anything except the doorway to the kitchen (on the left of me) and the hallway in front of me and yet I knew this was it. The house looked like the pictures. Everything was new. The tile, carpet, counter tops, sinks, fixtures and lighting. It was done very nicely. The more I looked the more I knew I was home. It was so weird, because I knew we did not have enough money or "power" to make sure things happened. But then the coincidences begin to happen. The house was considered a flipped house. It had been on the market for over 90 days which is not a good thing for the flipper. But the owner/flipper, Louie, was well known for flipping houses. We went to look at another house, Steve and I both liked it but my "heart" was still at the other one. Jimmy knew we were interested in the first house because I kept telling both him and Steve, "I like the other one better".
We went home and eventually started talking about the possibility of making an offer. While we were talking, Jimmy called and told us that the price had been dropped $5000. We decided to go for it. So on December 31, 5 days after talking to Dan about getting a mortgage we put a bid on the house. We offered the new price and the seller pays closing cost and escrow closes on Feb. 15 (time for financial paperwork). They came back and said pay $4000 dollars more, close on Feb 5th and they would pay closing costs. Just for your information, in this market the seller does not usually want to pay closing costs. Jimmy explained to Louie why we needed the extra time. And then we got the bad news, there was another offer on the table. So we waited. I was sure that it was over. Steve and I prayed about it. We asked Heavenly Father to let us get the house but only if it was His will and so we waited.
Part two coming later.
