The past several weeks have been a whirlwind and I’ve been anxiously waiting to share some personal news – my husband and I bought a house!
We had been renters for the last SIX years and there were times that I never thought we would be able to afford a house, especially during a global pandemic. I don’t know much about the real estate market but several friends and family members kept telling us that interests rates were at an all time low and now was a great time to start looking.
We started the home buying process back in August. We started by checking various real estate websites daily, in conjunction with binge watching House Hunters on HGTV. We really immersed ourselves in the process but then very quickly we realized how competitive the market truly was.
Welcome to home buying in a seller’s market! Where demand exceeds supply. I guess the global pandemic was driving city slickers to the suburbs because we all know space is a commodity. Despite locking in an incredibly low interest rate, we knew this wouldn’t be an easy process.
Once we connected with a realtor, she recommended that we hold off on putting in any offers until October, to ensure we don’t end up in an overlap of a mortgage payment and monthly rent. She also helped us with understanding our budget. In a seller’s market, homes sell faster, and buyers have to compete with each other in order to get an accepted offer. Our budget needed to be about $10K lower than what we thought it would be, simply because we had to be prepared to offer above listing price to have a fair shot.
Properties in the area we were looking at were quickly under contract within 3-4 days of being listed. It was mayhem! We considered ourselves lucky if we were able to even tour a property in this market.
At one point, we felt pretty discouraged about the current market that we thought we would need to renew our lease with our apartment complex. As first time homebuyers, we wanted to take our time and weigh all of our options before putting in an offer and in this market that was just not possible!
Just when we were basically ready to give up, it was as if the stars aligned for us because we found our dream home at the end of October, right before we had to give our 60 days notice to our leasing office.
The house we purchased first hit the market at the end of September and went pending three separate times before it was relisted. I remember texting my realtor asking if we could go see it and it had gone pending within 24 hours so we missed out. Then, at the end of October, I noticed the property status was back to active so we immediately went to tour the property the following day. By the end of the week we made an offer. We waited about 24 hours before we found out our offer was officially accepted and under contract. When we got the news from our realtor, I jumped out my chair with glee because I just couldn’t believe it! On our first try! Our realtor wanted us to be prepared that we would be competing with tons of other offers and to not get our hopes up so the news truly exceeded our own expectations!
From there we were under contract for approximately 30ish days, got the keys on December 3rd and moved in on December 14th!
Despite the fact that we love our new home so much, I will never ever recommend that someone move in the middle of a pandemic and right before the holidays. We also happened to move the day of a crazy rainstorm. The last couple weeks have been stressful but we’re so happy to be in our new home!
Moving definitely prompted me to do some major cleanout when it came to my beauty stash. I’m excited to share with you guys my new office/vanity space and hopefully get back to a regular blogging schedule after the holidays!
