Thursday, December 9, 2010

Home Sweet Home (Part 1)

If you haven't heard yet...the loan modification on our house got APPROVED!!! I am so thankful and give 100% of the glory to God for this. I know it was Him. He is the reason that we have our house in the first place and now he is the reason we get to keep it. He has made this very known by the timing of all the things surrounding our house. For the first part, I want to tell you the story of how we got our house, and the way God showed himself through the whole process.

Kevin's mom and step dad got married at the same time that Kevin was looking for a house. Kevin's step dad owned a condo in Redlands, and since him and his mom were moving into her house, he was going to sell it. Kevin was looking at places and decided just to buy his step dad's condo. He got it for a very good deal. He moved in, then we got married and I moved in. Once we had Olivia, and quickly got pregnant with Toby, we realized that we needed a bigger house, we needed a home.

The only problem, the market was at it's peak. Now even though we were going to be able to sell the condo for a whole lot, the houses in our price range (350k) were definitely fixer-upers. They were straight out of the 80's and all in the north side. *Side note: Call me a snob...I don't care, but I was NOT going to buy a house in the north side. I knew what I wanted and that was a 92373 zip code. Call me a brat...but I just knew what I wanted and didnt want to settle.* We had our house up for sale for 6 months with no bites. Six months of keeping the house clean in case someone came by, six months of looking at 30+ houses...none that I liked, six months of thinking "We need to get in a house before this baby comes out or there will be no place for him." It was rough. We decided to change realators. The new realator took us to see at least 15 more houses before we realized that we were just going to have to pay more for something that we could live in. So we looked at houses in the 400k range and they were so much better. We had found 2 that we put offers on, only for those houses to be bought in cash by an investor. It was such an emotional roller coaster ride.

After the second house, which I really liked, got swept away I had a break down. I was done. I cursed and cried and gave up. I remember sitting there, balling my eyes out, and just praying "God take it. Take my situation. I am realizing now I have absolutly NO control over whats going on. I can't keep getting invested, I can't keep getting let down." I pleaded with God to give me peace and take care of us.

A week later we got an offer on our house. This was bitter sweet. I was so thankful to have an offer, but so discouraged at the houses we had seen. We didnt want to accept the offer, then be homeless. So I prayed and prayed and prayed that God would show us our house. Our condo was listed for 299k. The lady offered us 10k less, which would have been fine, but we had already taken it down 10k when we listed it with the new realator. We knew we should take it but had 2 days to decide.

That night, around 9pm our realator called. She said that a realator friend of hers had a house that just fell out of escrow and that it was a really nice house in our price range. (They had been talking about our situation and she was on the look out for us along with our realator) Our realator said that we could go look at it first thing the next morning. So we did...and I fell in LOVE. I knew this was it, but Kevin took some convincing. All the walls were white, excpept for the add on which walls were wood paneling. I saw a blank slate, Kevin saw a boring white house. After much convincing from me, and any other family member we had come and look at it, he gave in. She called her realator friend and told her to tell anyone who was coming to look at it that there was already another offer in and she aggreed. So we put in the offer that morning, offering 10k less to make up for the 10k less the lady offered us for our condo. And...they accepted it. (God always works out numbers exactly for me.) We accepted the offer on our condo and in to escrow we went...

(...to be continued)