Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Our Wild Ride

So, we were sitting on the couch on Friday night two weeks ago (I know, we have a crazy social life) and Gary mentioned that one of our favorite 2-story models in our neighborhood was back on the market after a foreclosure and had an awesome price.  We both were like, "that is a great price, wish we could afford to do it right now".  Had you asked us, we were not even thinking of moving for atleast a year or two and the thought of selling our current house in this market was NOT appealing. 

Out of curiosity, I did a quick google search and realized with the current low interest rates, we could end up paying only a couple hundred more a month than what we are paying now.  (Crazy, I know.)  We went to bed.  We woke up on Saturday morning, poured our coffee and both said "why not?"  Well, buying a house means we need to sell our current house so we immediately went to work - cleaning, decluttering and sprucing up the joint.  We were NOT looking to buy a house so our current house was no where near ready to be put on the market.  Most of the projects we were working on - sprucing up the yard, touching up paint, scrubbing down the floors, and more were projects that have been on our "to do" list for far too long and regardless, needed to be done.  We worked HARD all weekend...I think we both lost several pounds of sweat with all our hard labor.

They were having an open house on Saturday afternoon so we cleaned ourselves up a bit and headed over to check it out.  It was beautiful - needs some love, elbow grease and a coat of paint but awesome!  We went home (around the corner) and said, what do we have to lose, let's put in a bid.  So we called our friend, a realtor (who was on vacation) to help us put together an offer.  We also called a friend in the mortgage business to start the process of getting us qualified - again, we were NOT looking so we had to start from ground zero.  We put an offer in on Monday afternoon - it was accepted on Tuesday.

This 2-story model has always been our dream house - it allows us to have a guest bedroom, a den, a playroom for the kids, a 3-car garage (for storage) and best of all, this house has a great back yard with a POOL!  It is hot here in Arizona and we have been dreaming of a pool!  This house is "Our Forever House" - the house we plan to be in at least until the kids are gone and we look forward to making this house our home, room by room, bit by bit.

On a whim, we are buying a new house!  And thus starts our wild ride!