When we finally made the conscious decision to start the house hunting process we had no idea what to expect. We had never owned a place of our own before, it would be our firs home as a married couple, and something that was “ours”. We were so excited and eager to get started that we couldn’t contain ourselves.

So the first step to house hunting is finding yourself a realtor that kicks but and takes names. If a realtor comes off at all lazy, run the other direction. I suggest finding a realtor that has been rooted in your desired community/area for some time and has built a reputation for themselves. Drive around the area you want to be in and see whose real-estate signs are on homes for sale. Is there someone who seems to “own the market”? Most likely a reason for that.

We went with a real estate agent who has been in the area for 35+ years. Her kids actually grew up down the street from my dad! Can’t get much more local than that! She was super flexible in the house hunting process. Always meeting us when it was most convenient for us, sometime after the sun had set.

We looked at several homes before we saw one that we both agreed on. The price was perfect (suspiciously low), location exact, four bed, two bath, beautiful hard wood throughout, 3 car garage, built in 2013 (basically brand new), granite counter tops and dark wood cabinets, exquisite master suite and so on. I had this feeling as soon as we walked in that I was going to fall in love with this house, and I did. We knew that we wanted to make an offer on the house before we even walked out. So we did. We knew there was a lot of interest in the house so we actually made and offer that was a little over asking price, hoping to “seal the deal”.  We signed a bunch of paperwork, went back and forth with our realtor and then we got the devastating news….. The bank decided to take the home to auction. Let me spell this out for you. The bank listed the house at a really great price to gain interest in the house, to make people fall in love like we did. Once they had several potential buyers they rip the listing off the market and take it to auction, hoping to create a bidding battle which would ensure more money for the house. We looked into bidding on the house but it was over $2k just to place a bid. So we heartbreakingly decided to keep looking.

The search continued for over a month before we found another house that we both really liked. At this point we both were so exhausted from looking at homes and being disappointed time and time again. Somewhere along the way we knew we had to lower our expectations if we were ever going to find a house and that’s something that I think most homebuyers realize at some point or another. Unless you are building, finding that “Dream Home” is next to impossible. But we found a house that we are super excited about making it our first home!

So we made an offer about $25k under asking price, my husband is a stickler, but I love him. The bank counter offered but only came down $3k. So we counter offered again at $20k under asking price and they accepted! We felt super fortunate and we stayed within our original budget, which can be hard to do! My frugal husband was very pleased.

We thought since we have now chosen a home that the worst was behind us. Oh boy, were we wrong. Stay tuned for my next blog where I tell you about Our Closing Process Nightmare. Future homebuyers be warned!