Moving on Up!

I am very excited to announce that in 23 days (or less!) we Gunters are closing on our first home! :D

Our apartment hunting experience in McMinnville was DREADFUL and I was so afraid we weren't going to find housing. We started the process during Brian's spring break, giving us about 8 weeks until graduation to find somewhere to live. Needless to say, I was beginning to become distressed. That weekend both sets of our parents suggested buying a home.

Buy a house? We don't have enough money to buy a house! Or so I thought...

After thinking about it and looking online at homes, I drove out to Manchester with my mother-in-law to look at one last apartment complex then at some houses that had sparked my interest. I fell in love with two houses: a fixer-upper whose structural bones are exactly what I want in a house and a perfect house that had a hot tub on the back porch! [I know it had a hot tub because I climbed up on the porch to look ;) Don't judge me; I got a splinter for my efforts.]

After lunch we met our realtor, who is Brian's boss's wife! She is awesome and has been so helpful throughout this whole process. During our meeting I found out both homes I liked were off the market; the perfect one had sold the day before. I was a little bummed for a few days because I couldn't find any other homes that I liked that were in our price range. I trimmed down the list of homes Dana (our realtor) had sent me in our price range, then gave the shorter list to Brian. While I was looking at them, I noticed that one of the MLS listing numbers ended in "0609," which is our wedding anniversary! I didn't say anything about the coincidence and I actually didn't give the particular house much thought, because I was still upset about the loss of the other houses.

We compared the four or five houses, thought them over, then called Dana for a viewing appointment. Two houses were basically move-in-ready and two needed some work done (new carpet, wallpaper removed, that kind of thing.) Brian gave me his order of preference, which differed from mine just a bit, but his number one choice was the house with the listing ending with 0609. I couldn't help but think it was fate and we were supposed to end up in that house.

Two days before we were supposed to go view the houses, Dana called me and said that three, not one or two, but THREE of the houses we liked were off the market. What was with our luck? But, the remaining house was the ---0609 listing. Once again, I thought the powers-at-be were at work. She had a couple of others for us to look at, so we wouldn't just have one house to view.

The ---0609 house we viewed first. I loved it... but I didn't want to get too attached due to my prior experience with falling in love with houses.  I wasn't really "feeling it" when we saw the other two homes so we decided to go back to the first house. Dana said she heard me sigh when we walked back in. As we went through the rooms again, I was mentally placing our furniture and even thought about where the Christmas tree would go.

Thirty minutes later we were at Dana's office writing up the contract to send to the owners of the house. I had to be at work that afternoon so we went through the paperwork rather quickly and we were headed back to Cookeville. We stopped in McMinnville for lunch and about five minutes after we were back on the road, my phone rang. The owners had verbally accepted our offer!!

We viewed houses on Good Friday, so the banks were closed and I had to get the loan paperwork started the following Monday. Our loan officer is great, also! Thank goodness for Rural Development loans which are geared for first time home buyers--no down payment, 30 years, with 3.5% fixed interest rate! Brian had class so I took all the paperwork home with me, he signed everything, and we sent it back to the bank. Friday (4/5) we had our home inspection and everything is perfect! We have everything finished on our end and are waiting on the underwriters. Our set closing date is May 2, but there is a chance they can finish before then since everything is done! I cannot wait to start painting and move all of our things to the house. We plan on moving in the night of Brian's graduation, Saturday, May 11. Happy days!

♥ Happy 10 months of marriage to us today! :)