We closed on our new house today! Before I get into the long story of how this all came to be, here’s a 30 second video of us telling the kids the big news.
Clearly, they didn’t care much. Our first mistake was leaving their new tractors out where they could see them. They came with us to see that house a few times and the little boy who lived there had lots of tractors. The boys told us that they wanted to move to that house because they had good toys. We didn’t want them to walk into the house and be disappointed that there were no tractors anymore, so we bought them each a new one. I thought about putting it in their new room, but instead we left it in the living area and, as my dad said, “Tractors trump everything.” So our big news wasn’t really big news.
I’m writing out the story because it’s been a complete roller coaster and I want to remember it. You can feel free to skip it. It’s long.
Towards the end of last year, our house hunting turned from casual and sporadic to hardcore and let’s-make-an-offer-now. We saw this house and another one. We’ll call that one the blue one. But the blue one had a contract on it. We decided to make an offer on this one, so I went to the bank and went through the process of getting financing. Before we could submit an offer, the house went under contract. After a few days, another one, four or so houses down from this one, popped up. We’ll call that one the white one. We put in an offer immediately. A couple days later, the sellers of the white one countered a bit too high. We let it go. On the same day that we let it go, this house popped back up. The other contract fell through. We put an offer in immediately, and it was accepted a couple days later. This was at the end of October. Since it was a short sale, we had to sit back and wait. And wait. And wait some more. By the time February rolled around, we had a decision to make. Extend the contract or let it go? We decided to go ahead and extend, even though it meant we could still be waiting for another two months. Two days after that, the original blue house went back up on the market. We saw it, and put in an offer. Both houses were in the same neighborhood, exact same model, and pretty close in price range. We decided that we liked both equally and it was basically a race to see who would answer us first. Three weeks later, the first house, this one, let us know we were approved.
And that is just the beginning of all the drama that followed. In the last month and a half, there have been so many hiccups, so many giant bumps in the road, and so many times where I thought we weren’t getting the house after all. The latest and hardest blow was today, just hours before our closing. In the last 2 weeks, I had finally begun to believe that nothing could stop this from happening. Our realtor (a wonderful lady who has been fabulous through this whole ordeal, and who also sold us our very first home right after we got married) had reassured me that we were past all the little bumps and it would be smooth sailing from here on out. Our lender (a cranky old lady who gave us looks funny enough to be in an SNL sketch) had even told me I just needed to breathe and that it was all going to work out. So it kind of hit me like a giant kick in the gut today when our realtor called this morning and said, “Are you sitting down? There is a HUGE hiccup.” She then told me a long, crazy story about a missing piece of paperwork that we absolutely could not close without. Apparently, a few of the people involved in the closing had known about it for 2 weeks and hadn’t bothered to tell us. The previous owners had been looking for this document for 2 weeks and had not found it. Since they couldn’t find it, the title company had to try to track down the owners before them. The owners before them were now divorced and the wife was nowhere to be found. Blah blah blah, if they didn’t find the wife and get signatures from her, they couldn’t sell us the house. Our only hope for all of this to get solved was for the other owners…the ones that just moved out…to find the dang paperwork. The realtor told me to prepare myself for the very real possibility that we were not closing today, and that it was highly likely that we would never close at all.
What do you think I did when I got this news today? That’s right. I cried. And cried and cried. This six month saga was still not over. I spent a large portion of the morning on my knees praying and praying for a miracle. My boys even asked me why I was praying so much. Those poor kids have been so confused for months now because our house is full of boxes and tons of their stuff is packed away and they’ve had no idea why. Well, Diego has had an idea, but we’ve been lying to him for weeks so we could surprise him. Whenever he asked about the boxes, I’d say, “I’m just doing some spring cleaning. Just putting away things we’re not using right now.” One day I asked, “Why do YOU think there are so many boxes?” He said, “Because we’re moving.” I squashed that with a, “Maybe one day but not right now.”
Anyway, back to the story. About 2 and a half hours before our closing appointment, our realtor called back and said, “It’s a miracle! Best news ever! The document has been found!” What do you think I did? That’s right. I cried some more. HOLY ROLLERCOASTER. My prayers were answered! We are new homeowners! I type this all out so I can one day look back and remember how much we fought for this house, and how clear it was that the Lord’s hand was in it every step of the way.
Now the real fun begins. The house is in need of some major work, so our next two weeks will be quite crazy. Marcelo has already ripped out every inch of carpet and has moved on to baseboards. The carpet. was. nasty. NASTY. They let their pets have their way with it. It absolutely had to go. In the next two weeks we’ll be replacing the floor, painting, cleaning, and maybe knocking down a wall. I’ll be taking pictures all along the way so I can do a before and after post down the road.
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!
