Holy cow, I'm buying a house. Well, not quite. Only sort of. Wishful thinking? I'm not sure. Let's start over. Hello, I'm April, and I don't know what the hell I'm doing! I may or may not be in panic mode at the moment. Try again later. Deep breath, annnnnd go.
Basically, it started with a phone call. I have bad credit. Not just bad, more like the monster under your bed, bad. I could supply a list of well thought out excuses, life pondering and what ifs, but the fact would remain that I have bad credit. I pretty much accepted that I'd be renting for the rest of my life. "Plenty of people are life long renters!" was my brave face cheer. I did take steps to improve my credit. Well, steps that I thought would improve my credit. My little arty brain read a few financial advice books, absorbed bits and pieces, bits and bobs, and came up with a slow and steady plan to try and repair my teenage destruction to my credit. I made lists, telephone calls, budgets, payment plans galore! I still struggle with money management, but I wiggled my way through and things started to look up a bit. I applied for a credit card...accepted. I applied for a car loan...accepted. Love my new car by the way.
Then, after a night of cheesy television, I looked over at Josh and said, "I wonder how close we are to being approved for a mortgage?" Now, back to that phone call. When I said phone call, did I mention it was A LOT of phone calls? See if you can follow: Over a year ago, a co-worker gave me a number of a mortgage broker. I never bothered calling, because I don't really enjoy rejection. I saved the number in my phone, just in case. Problem was, I couldn't remember the name of my co-worker. Now don't judge! We never actually worked together, we just worked for the same company. Here's where it gets tricky. I called my friend Adam, no answer. I called Matt, another old co-worker, and nephew of the co-worker in question, no answer. I called Jody, my old boss. Victory! She gave me his name, and the contact info for her mortgage broker, who she worked with early in the year to purchase a condo! I called the guy I had in mind first. Turns out, he's no longer working with mortgages, but he suggested his old co-worker. So, I called her, no answer. Then I called Jody's recommendation. Success! He answered, took all of my information, and wah-la! Pre-approval for a home mortgage. Of course he needed documents, etc., but wow.
From here, the roller coaster, snowball, and the giant boulder from Indiana Jones joined forces and just took off, Speed Racer style. We just started looking at houses online for fun. Turns out, there are a lot of affordable houses for sale. Then we started narrowing them down to our top ten. We called one of the agents attached to a house listing, and she was pretty awesome. Enthusiastic, down to earth, easy going, and funny! She didn't require any kind of commitment from us, so we decided to just have her be our agent. Hehe, we have an agent. We spent two days looking at those ten houses, and narrowed it down to our top four. After looking at those four, two things became apparent; one, photos do not do houses justice, and two, one house blew the others out of the water.
So, here we are, getting ready to put in an offer on the house tomorrow. It's only been two weeks. You'd think we were in a house buying marathon. I know it seems sudden, rash, hasty, impulsive, but when you've spent thirteen years dreaming of one day owning a home, collecting clippings from home magazines, discussing your big plans for your dream house, you're prepared to walk into a house and just know, this is the one.
So, to all of you dreamers out there, be cautious! Sometimes dreams take flight!
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