We're on our way

Home ownership here we come!

After 3 days, 30+ houses, and 2 bid attempts on houses, I think we have a keeper.

We left our house at 5:30 Friday morning and parked in the long term parking. We rented a car, which was an ordeal in and of itself. Since we're not yet 25 (I'm only 2 weeks away!) we had extra fees that were actually MORE expensive than the car rental itself. After the car rental, the penalty for being "under age", and insurance, we paid almost $300 for the 3 days. Yikes.

The drive through Dallas toward Mckinney was interesting. I think Dallas itself looks like a 70's version of a "futuristic" city. You know, something out of Tomorrow Land in Disneyland. It was pretty flat and barren looking with buildings jutting out all over. There were roads raised and curving over top other roads. I actually thought McKinney was very nice when we actually drove through town. I'm happy about that.

Our realtors were a great husband and wife team. They were wonderfully hospitable and had the great southern drawl. They did everything in their power to get us a house we wanted, and they were very concerned about us. We saw probably 15 houses that first day and thought we'd found one we were willing to bid on. (It was actually almost exactly like the house we're getting, but brand new.) The woman who'd had it built had two extensions on her closure date and Friday was supposed to be her very last day before he put it on the market again. At 5 PM he told us she hadn't signed so the house was open to us. The next morning we found out that her mortgage company called and said they were working it out with her and she'd sign on Monday. So, that was out.

We looked at about 12 more houses Saturday and found one we loved. It had a great kitchen with good cabinets. It had a HUGE master bath with a jetted tub. also had a sprinkler system and was within walking distance of an elementary and high school. We decided to move on this one fast. We went back to their office and started the bid process. About 5 minutes before we faxed in our bid, we were informed someone else bid on the property. So we changed around the numbers and put our highest bid in hopes we'd out bid them. The bids must have been close because it took the seller an hour to decide who he was going with. We were outbid. We found that out at 9 PM Saturday, so if we were going to have a house, Sunday it would be.


We ended up going to the 9 AM sacrament meeting and hit the houses again at 10:30. We had 3 houses left we'd consider. Unfortunately, we found out that 1 had sold the day before and 1 was being sold at the very minute we drove up.

That left one. This cute house is 1504 ft/sq

We went back to make sure it would work for us and decided it would do just fine.

I love the bead board cupboards

And the only thing I'd want to add in the kitchen is some sort of back splash.

The master and two bedrooms are pretty roomy.

It has a cute little fire place...

The other nice things about this place are:

1. It's only a mile to Raytheon
2. It's in a fairly new yet still established neighborhood
3. The yard is very large and we'll probably end up taking out a little grass and making a garden. Our lot is about 2x's the size of the houses near us.
4. The previous owners seem to be very clean (though they have indoor animals...) and everything's in as good of shape as could be hoped for
5. The price was pretty good and we're able to roll the closing costs into the mortgage so we don't have to pay them up front. (135K after all is said and done)
6. They were fine with our close date.
7. BEST OF ALL (well, not really best, but it did make a big difference to me) IT DIDN'T HAVE THE UGLY SHELL SINKS that almost every other house had. I don't know who made the decision that this was in! I personally think it will be hard to resell that in a couple of years.

He graduates April 27-28. The packers will come on May 3rd (our 3rd anniversary and second move on our anniversary). We'll clean the house on May 4th, and fly out on May 5th to sign the closing papers. I can't believe it's only one month away! Hooray! It's really exciting to me to move onto something new. We've been in Provo 7 years now and I think it's time to exit.