Anybody who owns a home has had to buy a house for the first
time. If you are in that category of people, you can probably identify with
this post.
When I attended the first-time homebuyer’s workshop a few
weeks ago, I sat through eight hours of lectures and PowerPoints designed—in my
mind—to frighten me into being careful during the whole process. I had the idea
when I left that I would be looking at hundreds of houses and when we found the
one we wanted, we would just buy it. Well, it’s just not that simple: other people want houses, too.
After working with a mortgage broker and taking a look at
our finances and credit, we hooked up with a real estate agent we were referred
to by the mortgage broker I met at the workshop. I like him (the mortgage guy). I clicked with him
in the class so I called him up afterwards to get things rolling. He
recommended a gentleman with a small business to show us some homes in the
Wright-Carver-McLeod counties area. (This is the area we consider "in our range" for time to work, USDA-RD loan approval, and travel time to our respective families.)
One week in and we have looked at three houses. Each house
was unique in their condition, the
first house in that the people were home when we got there. They were just
as surprised as us, and they wrapped up their baby in a blanket and left out
the side door with another kid into a bus that was parked on the side of their
property. Not any part of that sentence was a joke: that really happened.
The first thing we noticed on the inside was dishes piled up
in the sink, and an odor of urine. We noticed the large quantity of windows,
which were all tightly covered in blankets or drapes, or other fabric shells. There
were cobwebs in the corners, and there was dust on everything. The agent told
us to overlook that stuff, and look at it for what it could be. The outside was
a main street out front and a berm out back protecting the house from the
mighty Crow River. We traipsed up the frozen berm and the view was quite nice.
The property was located at the bend in the river on which I imagined a dock and
a small canoe for fishing with the girls. The image went away when he explained
that flood insurance would be rated at the level of the house compared to the
river, not that there was protection. I threw up in my mouth when he mentioned
how much that could add to the mortgage.
Back inside we went into the basement where there was a
makeshift master bedroom with what was clearly some form of drug paraphernalia
sitting openly on the night stand. I had been in many homes like that over my
years, and it was never easy knowing that children lived in them. The next day,
Amanda mentioned that none of the beds for the kids had blankets on them;
perhaps they were being used to cover the windows.
The
second house is the first and only of the first three houses that we fell
in love with. I toured it first, and Amanda and I went back together the next
day to give it a more thorough look. It had so much of what we were looking
for, including a bathroom that I could call my own. It sits on a corner lot of
the small town of Silver Lake, MN. Here is the
Wikipedia page on the town if you want to take a look.
The third house was in Glencoe and we had very little
interest in it. It was cute, but there wasn’t enough room, so I won’t even put
up a link.
We plan on looking around at more homes, but we like house
#2 so much that we decided to make a move on it and put in an offer. In my mind
that was the end of it, and I already owned the house. The real estate agent
quickly informed me that there was already an offer for the house but the
sellers had not accepted it. So, I offered the list price to see what would
happen. This morning I got a message telling me there were multiple offers and
that there was a deadline for the best and highest offers this coming Thursday.
I added 5k on top of the list price to see if they would take the bait, and I
will find out on Thursday.
For now, we have to be patient and keep looking for houses.
If we don’t get this one, there will be others we will love, and there is
plenty of time to get it right. I love this house enough to hope that this is
it. It is out of my hands now, and all I can do is wait.
