In June we started hearing rumors that when the contract at our apartment came up for renewal the end of July, rent was going to increase and all sorts of new fees were going to be added. We already felt like we were paying an arm and a leg there, so we started looking at the possibility of buying our first home. Being my mother's daughter (she is very smart and sound with money), I felt like we had no where near enough money in savings for a down payment and we needed to save for probably 10 more years. Hahaha! So we just started looking into it and dabbling a little to see what types of homes we might be able to afford and in what locations. After some research, it seemed like buying was an option with how much we were paying in rent and how much we could put down for a down payment. Miracle! We looked on Zillow.com and Utah Real Estate. We found a few that we liked online. We looked at a couple in person, and none of them seemed like quite the right fit. I found one in late June that looked promising in Lehi. We looked at it on Monday, and by Saturday, we had made an offer. By the following Tuesday, it had been accepted. It all happened so fast and smoothly (well, as smoothly as buying a house goes). Our closing date was while I was in Anchorage, so James handled all the signing and paper work. By the time I landed, we owned a home!
Here are some pictures of our apartment so we can always remember our first home as a married couple (they are all panoramic, so a little skewed, but you get the gist):
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| Master bathroom and bedroom (no, our bed is never made...oopsies!) |
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| Living room and kitchen |
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| Eating area, my "office" and the hallway back to the bedrooms |
Apparently, I didn't take any pictures of the second bathroom and bedroom, but we had those too.
So we signed papers on Thursday, Aug. 14, and we had to wait all the way until Saturday afternoon to get the keys. It nearly killed me!
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| Sitting outside our new house! |
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| Our very own front door! |
It was about this time that we had close the garage (we didn't have the garage door openers from the previous homeowners yet) and closed the door behind us to take the above picture and locked ourselves out of the house. Awesome!
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| That resulted in this face... |
Luckily James used the ol' credit card trick to pop open the front door. We have since fixed the lock so that can't be done anymore so don't get any big ideas out there! We brought in a couple of loads of stuff from our cars and headed back to the apartment. We weren't going to be fully moving in until the next weekend.
Last Sunday, we were watching TV in our apartment after work, and I said, "What are we doing here?! We have a house!" So we packed up a blanket and pillows and headed over to the house and played Rummikub in the living room on a blanket.
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| Our first visitors! |
Yesterday, Brandon and Noelle's whole family, Brett and Jenny's whole family, and Amy and Dan's whole family helped us move the last of our stuff to the house. We could not have done it without everyone! Dedo bought Arby's for everyone for lunch and James' parents brought drinks to the house for everyone. It was definitely a group effort, and we are so grateful for everyone's help!
It has been a whirlwind, but we are very excited to be homeowners! We will miss our ward and being 2 minutes away from Harmon's, but we are looking forward to our new adventures here in Lehi! Pictures of the new house to come as soon as it doesn't look like a total disaster here! It might be a while!
That marks #19 off the bucket list - Own a Home...COMPLETE!
