We Bought a House!

Well, it finally happened. My husband and I somehow managed to purchase our first home in the midst of an insane market. Its small, and cute, and needs a lot of work, but it is ours!

Here are some specs: 880 square feet, .13 acres of land, 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and built in 1960. It has a butterfly style roof, 3 cinderblock walls and a whole lot of character. I’ve decided to call it the Butterly Bungalow.

Let’s talk about how we acquired this adorable home. I got really really lucky and used a lot of my network to pull it off. Let me explain:

Back in December 2021 I staged this house’s renovated twin, which is right next door. It it updated, bright, light and clean. We tried to purchase that house off market, before I staged it. But our offer wasn’t strong enough, so the owners put it on the market, where we tried again with a higher offer. Yet, we got beat out (this will be a theme in this story).

Very sad and feeling beat, the selling agent (and my client) called and told my buyers agent that the owners own the same house, without any updates, and plan on selling in the next month. He said he would try to get them to sell it to us, off market if possible. We were elated, but not holding our breath over such a great prospect.

So my husband and I continued looking at homes, offering way over the asking price, and getting beat out over and over again. Anyone who has gone through this knows how discouraging and emotionally exhausting it is. As soon as we decided to pump the brakes on the house hunting, I got a call one fine February morning from the selling agent, saying the owners were ready to sell the other butterfly house.

Excitement again! They named their price, said they wanted an easy transaction, and there was one catch — we couldn’t see the house until the end of the month (3 weeks away), but we would have to officially place our offer. WHAT? After some back and forth, the current tenants agreed to let us come scope out the exterior and crawl space before we officially handed over our Due Diligence check. We snooped, we liked, we paid.

So after 3 VERY long weeks, we finally got to see the house, start collecting bids for work. And on a very rainy March 10th, we closed on our first home. I bet you want to see pictures now…