The reason I’m so late posting an update this week is because I was busy trying to buy a house! My sweet husband was so sick with a stomach bug this whole first week at his new job, but he persevered and went to see any house I’d placed on our saved list at Realtor.com all of Sunday afternoon and every night after work. He was such a great sport about it, and I know he was feeling really bad.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that none of the houses he’d seen really “did it” for me. I mean, I just kept thinking “yep, that’s a house!” But nothing really jumped out at me as being “the one” or even anything I felt excited about calling home, and I really didn’t want to settle for something that wasn’t going to make this cross-country move worth the effort and expense.
Then Wednesday happened. I was up early, and instead of just following leads that came to my inbox from Realtor.com and Trulia.com, I decided to do a blanket search manually, and I didn’t put any restrictions on price. Low and behold, the first house that came up on my search results was this fabulous, gorgeous, sprawling ranch-style home with 3,341 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, 2 dining rooms, an office, a laundry room, a pantry closet, a 3-car garage, an in-ground gunite tiled and heated pool with attached spa, and all of it sits on a corner lot that’s 1/3 of an acre. And it was listed for $280K!
Now that was more than I wanted to spend, but this house and property were so beautiful that I felt compelled to switch to a 30-yr. loan so we could still try to buy it! I got in touch with hubby and asked him to please be sure to go and tour this house that same day, as it had just been listed about 1/2 hour before I found it, and I knew it would go fast, as most of the properties there do.
He worked out an appointment for that evening with the realtor and met him there. When they arrived, some folks were already there touring the house! It was abundantly clear that this was going to go fast. I told him that if it even remotely looked anything like the photos in person, then he should try to make an offer as soon as possible. He toured the house while I sat at my computer in VA watching the whole thing streaming on Facebook Live. We were totally in love with this house!
It had every feature than any of us wanted in a new house. It was all one level, it had a gorgeous kitchen with double ovens for all that cooking and baking that I love to do, and it even had a library that would make an amazing homeschool room for my kids!
The huge master suite has an exit door out onto the covered back porch that overlooks the pool, and it has a circular entry into the master bathroom to create a his and hers arrangement with the walk-in shower and built-in dresser on one side and the garden tub overlooking the pool and built-in dresser on the other side.
And there are lots of rooms with gorgeous floor-to-ceiling arched windows. There’s so much natural light in this house, and I love that!
And there’s even a rec room with a wet bar! The owners run a school of music for children out of this room currently.
And that covered back porch overlooking the pool, which can be accessed from three different parts of the house, is just a dream to me! I can totally picture sitting out there with my tea in the morning when the house is still quiet and just relaxing and enjoying the nature sounds of early morning.
So Steve, realtor, and myself went back and started putting an offer together. It took until nearly midnight the following night to get all the details and paperwork and signatures together, but we got it in on Thursday night. Our realtor told us to go to bed and sleep peacefully, knowing it had been submitted. He asked me to write a personal letter to accompany the offer about why we wanted the house, so I did that, too. He promised to check with the listing agent the next day and give us a feel for how the process was going in terms of interest and other offers.
While I was out shopping with my daughter on Friday, the realtor called and gave me the news: the sellers accepted our offer! And they said they loved my letter. As it turned out, that letter might be the only reason they took our offer without waiting for others. They had a lot of interest the very first day with back-to-back showings, but they decided not to even wait for the busy weekend and just accepted our offer. I was crazy excited! Our realtor had not expressed much confidence that we had any chance at all. He expected there to be a bidding war because this property was priced at about $15/sq. ft. lower than others in the neighborhood, and this particular community is highly desired and usually has properties that get sold within a couple of days.
I feel so blessed! I can hardly believe that I’m going to be calling this place home in about 6 weeks. The deal is set to close on June 5th, but the sellers want to lease back and stay until June 20th while they prepare to get into their new home elsewhere, so I’ll plan to arrive on the 21st! The timing works out well since Hayden graduates on June 13th, and it will take us several days to drive down there with two vehicles and two dogs anyway.
Wow. The last couple of days have been a whirlwind! The sellers sent us a very nice letter today to tell us a little bit about themselves and their home, and they were gracious enough to offer to leave us the custom bookcases in the library for our homeschool room! That was so kind. And as it turns out, they used to live here in Hampton Roads! It’s such a small world!
So now the packing and purging are underway in earnest…
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