As most people know now (since we've already shared the news via Facebook), Jon and I bought a house this week! It was a whirlwind and completely unexpected, so I wanted to share "the story" with everyone.
First of all, both Jon and I totally feel like this house is a God-thing and that God's hand reserved this house for us and led us too it. And then we received such an awesome, dream-come-true deal that it can only be from God. So, all credit and glory goes to God for preparing this special home for us in advance!
Anyway, back to the story. :) As we've been lining up a realtor and looking at houses online for the last month, a house down the street from my brother Jeff and Lori's house went up for sale. We normally couldn't afford a house in their sub (it's a very nice community), but the house is a foreclosure that went up about 5 weeks ago or so. We were interested in the house, but weren't sure because it was at the higher end of our price range. A definite "want-to-see" though! Then last week when our realtor was lining up houses in Byron for us to go see on Monday night, I mentioned that we wanted to go see the foreclosed house. Our realtor searched for it on the Grand Rapids MLS and came up with nothing! I sent her the listing from Realtor.com, but the MLS number listed there was not in the Grand Rapids region. Somehow, the realtor assigned to the house was a realtor from K-zoo, so they listed the house in the K-zoo region MLS. So if people searched the Grand Rapids region the house didn't show up. I still don't totally understand this, but our realtor was very excited as she tried to explain what must have happened. Bottom line - almost no one knew about this house since it wasn't coming up on the standard searches for houses in Byron Center. You had to KNOW the house existed to find it!
Our realtor couldn't get a return call from the agent the house was listed with though, so we didn't think we could see the house on Monday night when we went out looking. We saw basically every house in our price range in Byron that night, and everything was either too expensive (it needed landscaping and finishing) or a dump. We were discouraged. Our realtor wanted to at least go see the house by Jeff and Lori though since she hadn't seen even the outside, so we drove on over. As we were standing on the porch peering in the windows our realtor tried the door for some reason - and discovered that the house was not locked (which is freaky and scary, and awesome, all at the same time!).
When we went in we could see some damage from the big dog the previous owner's had (chewed baseboards, one chewed wall, corner of island chewed, pet hair everywhere, damage to the lawn from holes, etc.). But other than that the house was in great condition and was beautiful. Our realtor was amazed and told us it was a great deal. I replied, "Yeah, and they just lowered the price by 20 grand on Friday." Our realtor did not know that and was almost beside herself - she literally said, "This is the best deal you will find in Byron Center in your price range ever. You guys have to buy this house." Well, Jon and I were already thinking that anyway so we were on board with that! Our realtor said that if people had know about the house it would have been sold in days for the higher price, it was such a great deal. But people didn't know about it (thank you God!), and we were one of the only people to see the house!
The next day we submitted an offer to the bank for a little bit less than asking (we do have to buy all the appliances, and we figured we'd give it a try!). The bank counter-offered the next morning, splitting the difference, and telling us that the price they offered was the "drop bottom" price they could sell the house for. I don't know if that was true or not, but we did get an awesome deal. The house was built just a 3 years ago and we are buying it for 56% of the original build price. We are so excited! We never thought that we would ever be blessed with such a nice house, in such a nice location, for so little money. This truly is a gift from God and we haven't been able to thank Him enough! We bought a house!!!! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment