A story about our house hunting rollercoaster!

Getting our house was a crazy, rollercoaster adventure. And nothing like what they show you on HGTV.

It all started Sunday, February 8th. On a whim we had decided that week that we wanted to start house hunting. After crunching some numbers and googling the area we wanted we decided to go see two houses in West St. Paul. The first house was super cute but way too small and the yard was not right for us. The second one was beautiful... on the outside. They had a beautiful door with a great window. That is the only good thing we can say about that house. The inside was that of a horror movie. There was the scariest "finished" basement we had ever seen and the upstairs was a shoddy edition that looked like Willy Wonka created it.

So we started getting a listing of all the houses in the West St. Paul, Homecroft and Cherokee heights area of St. Paul. We had made an appointment to get preapproved so we held off on house hunting until then. Before we could get approved, the house on Winifred went down in price by $20,000 It was a house we had been watching on the listings. We asked to see it immediately because it looked too good to be true. We toured it on Feb. 21st and fell in love with it, and the next day told our relator that we wanted to make a bid. After a mad scramble to get the parent's approval (which we got!), we got preapproved for our mortgage and that day we made an offer! And the first of many waiting games began. A bidding war ensued and we had to up our bid.

On March 2nd we found out that we were out bid. I cried. And then we started our search again. That next weekend we saw so many houses that all blur together into a mess of awfulness. Leaky roofs. Scary bathrooms. Awful yards. Disgusting everything. Did we mention how cold it was? Most of these houses were vacant and the heat was so low that it was warmer outside than it was inside!

And then suddenly, on March 12th we got great news! The house on Winifred was back on the market! We made an appointment to see it one more time along with a few other homes. On March 15th we made an offer... again. And by the beginning of the week we had an accepted offer! They wouldn't cover all of our closing costs, which was another stressful point, but we managed to scrape together the money!

And then the waiting game began... again. We waited so long that the first date we set for closing passed. The house was a short sale, which is where the bank that owns it sells it for less than the mortgage owed. So basically, the bank loses a lot of money, but saves some by not going through a lengthy, costly, foreclosure. There were two mortgages on this house so we had to get two bank approvals in order to go through with everything. We waited, waited and waited and finally got the first bank approval. We went through with the insepection (where there were no surprises: we needed a new furnace, some plumbing and a mouse trap), even though there was a chance that it could all fall through and we would lose our money. The house was a few weeks before its redemption period, and if we waited any longer the house was going to go into foreclosure, and we would most likely end up losing it.

So the week of closing came and I became increasingly crabby and Nick continued to wait patiently. We were closing on Thursday, April 9th and each day we waited and heard no response from the second mortgage. Finally, on the morning of closing at around eleven o'clock we got verbal approval and were able to close on the house!

As of Thursday, April 9th at 4:00 the house was officially ours! And thus... the adventure continues!