Home Sweet Home

This week I became a homeowner. What an exciting plunge I took, but it doesn't come without a great back story!

I had been casually looking for a house for the past year and a half. However, with returning to school, it was put on the back burner.With two weeks left in my program and lots of end-of-term projects looming, I discovered a house that looked absolutely perfect for me. My friend Kim went with me to check it out and it lived up to my expectations. So much so that I called my parents to see if they would come and look at it.

We wandered through the house with other possible buyers during its first open house. My dad (who tends to be a pessimist) could only say that it had squeaky hardwood floors. Indeed, it was the perfect little house for me. However, my head was spinning with the end of school looming and wondering if now was really the right time for me to jump into home ownership. I decided that perhaps it was best if I waited. There would, after all, be lots of other houses for sale.

Several weeks passed, I finished school, and I happened to notice online that the house was still for sale and the price had actually dropped! Hmmm, my interest was rekindled. I drove past it again and around the neighbourhood. I talked about it with my friend Duane, thought about it some more and went to look through it once again. This time I took my friend Murray with me, who has been my go-to guy about such matters since I have known him. We discussed over lunch and after going through the house, Myrrh gave it a solid thumbs up. I was on the verge...but actually making an offer was a big decision. I needed the weekend to think about it.

Over the Easter weekend, I thought about it some more and crunched the numbers. I considered the pros and cons and by Monday, I emailed Lisa to say I wanted to make an offer. I was so disappointed when she emailed me back to say someone had put an offer on it THAT DAY. I couldn't believe that it had sat on the market with no offers for four weeks, and as soon as I was ready, someone else was ready too. This was the beginning of a roller coaster ride of hopeful optimism and then disappointment.

As the rules go, I wasn't allowed to make an offer until the buyer decided to accept the counter-offer or sign it back to the seller. Lisa was convinced he would sign as he knew someone else was interested. (disappointment) However, she emailed me to let me know that he signed it back with another offer which opened it up to me. (optimism) So, as was Lisa's suggestion, I went in with my best offer. Later that afternoon I found out that a third offer had entered the mix. So, although my offer was beating the first one...the second one was competition. I increased my offer as high as I felt comfortable, but in the end it wasn't enough. The other offer won out. (disappointment)

Lisa reminded me that the offer could always fall through - you just never know. But, that doesn't happen very often. I was convinced that the house was gone, but was awaiting the final word. In the meantime, I was pretty disappointed to have missed out on the perfect property. Anything else I looked at just didn't compare.

Nearly two weeks passed before I got a call, text and email from Lisa while I was driving to see my mom on Mother's Day. The offer had fallen through and the house was available again! I couldn't believe it. I knew at that point it was meant to be. In fact, I had said that to my friend Bruce...if this deal falls apart, I was meant to live in that house!! So I texted Lisa back to say YES!

The next few days were again filled with ups and downs as I had a verbal agreement to my offer when another offer came in. Unfortunately, they had to bring it forward to the seller and it was higher than mine. But, since the house was meant to be mine....the seller decided to go with me. She just felt like that was the right decision.

So, after a week of appointments, paperwork, home inspection, more paperwork and even getting my very first lawyer...I am the proud owner of my first house. I will post more details about the property itself soon. Stay tuned! (but I will say... front porch and hardwood floors!)