first let me start by sharing the story of how we became homeowners. it is nothing short of a miracle & once again, i love this story ♥ okay ; after writing this part of the story, i decided it was way too long for one post so i am going to be making 2 parts -- here is part one!
when Adam & i were first engaged we talked about renting apartments or a small house because we thought it'd be cheaper. we even looked at a 2 bedroom, 1 bath tiny rental complex. to be honest, i was pretty excited, it was the exact same one my sister lived in for awhile a few years back. the rent was about $500 a month, i don't remember if we paid utilities & trash or not.
one day Adam came over & said he talked to his friend for awhile & his friend recommended that it might be cheaper to buy a house that has been foreclosed on. i wasn't too sure about the idea at first, i mean it would take a lot of work & money to fix up a house. we looked online for houses that were cheap but needed a lot of work. we actually fell in love with one & it was only $23,000! it was a 2 bedroom 1 bath & had a cute wood siding, a newer roof, new windows & new drywall.
of course it still needed new carpet, flooring, paint ect. - but those
were easy fixes!
Adam called about the house a couple days
later & found out it had multiple offers on it & one had
actually been accepted! boooo!! we were pretty upset ; see we live in a
small town where many make an income buying, fixing up, and selling
these kind of houses. someone in this business would be silly to pass up
a house like this with such easy fixes, and they beat us to it :( Adam
has a friend who is a real estate agent & he told us that it's not
final until the "for sale" sign is out of the yard. of course that kept
our hopes up & Adam would drive by the house everyday to make sure
the sign was still there. we found some other houses online that where
cheap, but needed a lot more work than the cute little townley house. we
even made a date with a realtor to look at 3 houses the next saturday.
still kinda sad, we continued to pray for God to open doors for us &
maybe even keep this house open for us!
one friday
night after school i went over to my dad's house to work on some
homework because my mom & stepdad where gone for the night - and i
didn't want to be alone on a friday - boring. to my surprise, my dad
& stepmom got a call from a real estate agent to go see a house they
were interested in. gee - i didn't even know they were thinking about
moving. since i was there that night, they asked me if i wanted to go
with them to look at this house. of course i would, i mean who'd rather
stay home and work on homework? not me!
once we got there, i
saw the real estate agent is our pastor's wife. awesome, i love her!
after we look at the house for my parents, she asked me how the house
search was going for Adam & i. i told her how we found the perfect
house on townley street, but someone had already bought it & how we
have plans tomorrow (saturday) to look at other houses we could possibly
fix up. She replied with a comment that would change our lives...
"yeah, i know the house you're talking about on townley, because we
bought it!" (maybe i should mention that her husband, our pastor, was
one of those people to buy & fix up houses to make a bigger
income!) WHAT! NO WAY! assuming they would want to resell the house for a
price out of our budget, i got up the nerve to tell her that we would
be interested in the house if it would be around $40,000 (our max
budget) she said that shouldn't be a problem and she'd talk to her
husband about it!
i couldn't believe it! i couldn't wait to tell
Adam! what were the chances that i would happened to be with my dad that
night, that i would have been with them to look at their house, that i
would run into the person who bought our cute little dream home, and
that they'd be willing to fix it up for such an amazing price! After i
told Adam, he wasn't too excited. (what!? like come on, this is an
amazing answer to prayer!) He wasn't thrilled because he only wanted to
pay the $23,000 instead . "we coulda bought the house ourselves for cheap
& fixed it up ourselves" he said to me, but i replied with "well we didn't, it's too late, and this is still an amazing deal & we should
be super excited that we can get the house we want!!" we continued to
pray for God's direction and Will for our next home.
the next
day was saturday & we already had plans to look at 3 other houses
that were in our budget, but also needed a lot of work. i could tell none of
these houses where for us. they need a CRAZY amount of work. from
needing a new roof, to holes in the wall, needing new siding, new
windows ect. in the back of my mind i kept thinking, i can't wait to look
at the townley house, theses houses are not for us.
later that
same day, our pastor took us to look at the townley house. he kept
saying "keep in mind, it needs a lot of work" - hahahaha, please, we've
looked at 3 other houses today that needed a lot of work, this is
nothing.. of course when we walked in, we could smell the smoke from the
old homeowners, we could see the walls were stained yellow, the
kitchen cabinets needed a good cleaning, the carpet needed replaced and
there were some scratches on the wall. but we knew, this is the house for
us! we could see the house fixed up like we wanted, we could see us
living in this place. after looking at the house & talking to our
pastor, we decided we really want this house! we made an agreement that
he would do & pay for all the carpet and flooring, but if we wanted
it for so cheap we had to paint it ourselves. a HUGE THANK YOU to adam's
dad & grandpa who redid the bathroom to make it look better &
his grandma who literally painted all the walls in the house. of course
Adam's mom & my mom helped a bunch too. we are beyond grateful for
their help to make this house a home.
after everything was said
& done we had some upgrades and our Pastor gave us a price a little
higher than $40,000 but we were to exited & thankful that God
allowed us to get this house, we didn't care. i am so incredibly
thankful for Adam's hard work & way of saving while he was single -
we were able to put HALF DOWN on our home making the payment WAY cheaper
than renting!! because of Adam's hard work , we not only put half down -
we continued to pay enough money each month that we payed our 15 year mortgage off in LESS THAN 3 YEARS!! wow. my hubby rocks!! we just
celebrated our 3rd year of marriage this July. it was our goal to be
COMPLETELY DEBT FREE by our 3rd wedding anniversary. we are so blessed!
no it's nothing fancy. we enjoy living with less. we love this home regardless. we are so thankful & blessed that our great God gave us such a sweet home to start a family ; now that we're expecting baby #2 should we move to a bigger home? that's part 2! stay tuned!
see you soon!
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