House house house house

It’s official…

*insert drumroll here*

We’re buying a house! This house, to be exact:

     Two weeks ago, we had more or less given up our hopes of getting into a house any time soon. We’d looked everywhere, and we really just couldn’t find anything in our price range that we were excited about. Plus, we only get to be in the free corporate housing until June 19th, so our time to find somewhere was dwindling quickly. The day after we had given up hope though, a new house went on the market. The home is a foreclosure and the last tenants were evicted. Before they left though, they made sure to throw themselves a nice pity party and trash their house and let their pets do their pet business where ever they so chose. The house stinks like a petting zoo as a result (thanks old tenants). It will need completely new flooring, paint, and some deep cleaning, but is otherwise in nice, new condition.
     It is a 1900 sq ft home built in 2006 with 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 2 fireplaces, a bonus room, and a decent-sized yard. The master has a great double-sink bathroom, a full-sized shower with two showerheads, and an enormous walk-in closet. It’s so perfect I can’t even believe it’ll be ours! It’s only 20 minutes away from Sam’s work, and we are SERIOUSLY EXCITED!
     Anyway, because it is bank-owned, smells bad, and has horribly stained floors— it was priced about 30-40k less than any of the comparable houses in the area. We acted quickly and saw it the very first day it was on the market. We knew we’d have competition on it, so right away, we placed an offer that was 5k over their asking price. We’re so glad we did, because there were 6 other offers that weekend. It was on the market for a total of 9 days and was shown by at least 30 realtors in that amount of time. Apparently we weren’t the only ones who thought it was a good deal.
     Anyway, the bank officially accepted our offer and we both signed the contract yesterday and we should close the first week of July!
     We have to be out of our corporate housing this friday though, so Addie and I are going to go live in Vancouver with my parents for a few weeks until the house closes. Sam will still need to work though, so he’s going to stay in our realtor’s rental apartment and visit us on the weekends. Our stuff will be in storage until the house is ready, then MS will move it in for us.
     So, that’s the scoop on us! We are SOOO excited. We’re going to go pick out carpet and flooring tonight, so wish us luck! Our only obstacle left is the inspection, which should be done in the next week. The house is only 3 years old though, so we’re hoping that it doesn’t have anything fundamentally wrong with it.
     I really dont want to post too many pics and whatnot here on our public blog, but we took videos of the place and have tons of pictures of the inside posted in a private gallery. If you want to see them, send me an email and I can send you the link and password to our gallery.
     Work is going really well for sam so far, and he will blog about it soon. We’ve just been really busy with all sorts of crazies going on.
     Thanks to everyone for their well wishes, prayers, and support. It means the world to us and we’re incredibly grateful. Hooray for having a place to live!