Finding Our Forever Home

Photo by Tierra Mallorca on Unsplash and design by Jodie Parris

Hello my loyal readers!

I hope your Spring is off to a blooming start. I know I have been LOVING all the spring blooms around me, even though my allergies have been miserable this year.

Last month my husband and I celebrated 1 Year of closing on our first (forever) home!! It really is insane to think this time last year we were prepping our brains and wallets with everything we wanted to do prior to moving in.

The front of the house the day we saw it!

Why we bought a home:

“There is never a good time to buy a home” is something my husband and I kept saying the months leading into us starting the home buying journey.
We had just gotten married that summer (June 2022), and the year was winding down. Since our wedding we had really started focusing our financial efforts on saving for a house.

As mostly anybody knows, the housing market has been insane since 2020 due to the Covid Pandemic. We initially talked with a bank in 2020 to get a better idea of what it would take to fund a home with a down payment, and what we would qualify for in a loan. We knew then we weren’t ready financially, but became a little more knowledgeable about what it would take to get there.

I want to acknowledge that homeownership is not for everyone, and you don’t need a house to be happy.
When we were renters we really loved where we lived. However, we knew we needed a little more space, and we had a very controlling landlord that made being a renter more miserable than it needed to be.
We also knew that we weren’t going to leave the area of Western North Carolina, and with our new work from home jobs we would have more options of locations to look for a home.

At the start of January 2023 we finally saved up for a down payment, had a solid idea of what we could afford, what and where we were looking at, and slowly Realtor became our most visited website.

What Surprised Us with Home Buying:

When it came to buying a home it’s hard to say what our expectations were since all of it was new. I will say it was one of the most emotionally exhaustive times for me. Anytime I saw a new home on realtor, and in person, I wanted and tried to envision everything. From the day to day life there, to how long would it take to get groceries, things we would want to change or update, our monthly mortgage payment, and everything in between. With it being such a huge financial investment it was hard to not get weighed down to a degree with all the details of the home search process.

One of the biggest things we experienced was being shocked at the price the houses were listed, given how old or outdated they were. The fact we were more in a “sellers market” certainly impacted the pricing of homes, which means we had to really think and discuss what our “have to,” “ideal,” and “dream home” would be in the current market we were in.

Have To Have = If the house doesn’t have it we can’t even consider it

Ideal = A step above the Have to Have, but not full Dream level. “Turn Key” ready, but room for improvements or updates to be exactly what we want.

Dream = The most perfect home and everything we could dream of, nothing needs to be changed or updated.

Writing out these lists after we looked at the first few homes really centered us on what we wanted, and helped us with decision making on if we wanted to pursue a home further.

I was also surprised at how easy the overall experience was with the formalities of home buying, and I contribute 1000000% of this to our amazing Realtor.

If there is any advice you take from this post, make sure you get a Realtor who will work with you, and for you, when it comes to finding your home.

The person we reached out to worked with one of my best friends with purchasing her home, and he lived up to everything she said. He has won so many awards in our area for his work as a realtor and I feel so lucky we got to work with him.

How did we know our house was “The One”:

In total we looked at 8 houses before viewing our now home. A lot of the homes we looked at really intrigued us with one or two components, but we had yet to find one that really captured the bulk of what we were looking for.

The day we viewed our house for the first time, we had initially saw two other houses we were extremely excited for that were major busts. The first home we were at for only 10 minutes because it was completely filthy, and smelled terrible with pet urine and feces. This was certainly one of the surprises with viewing houses. It was really a bummer because we loved the location of the house and the backyard it had.
The second one was unfinished in a lot of ways, and would take a lot of work to get it to a finished capacity. We aren’t the most handy people, and we needed something more “turn key ready” than that.
Earlier that morning I got an automated email from our Realtor, and a text from my mom regarding a house that just listed that day.
Since we had extra time on our hands, our realtor called and was able to get us in for a viewing, and we fell in love with it.

View from the back porch the day we saw the home!

The major thing we fell in love with is the view, because we love the mountains obviously, but didn’t necessarily want to drive up a big mountain to get an incredible view everyday.
Everything else hit all the “have to,” “ideal,” and even some of our “dream home” wants. If it didn’t fully hit a “dream home” want, there was potential to change or update it to be exactly that.

It was the first home my husband and I both could see us living and growing old in.

We ended up putting in an offer that night, and ended up going into a “bidding war” since there were multiple offers after just the 1 Day on the market. Crazy right?!?!
Thankfully we were able to talk and crunch numbers with our Mortgage Loan Officer to see what loan amount we would be most comfortable with paying on a monthly basis, and made our best offer that night.
We were nervous, but my husband and I both slept like babies because we knew if that house was meant to be ours our offer would be enough. I also think we were just so emotionally exhausted from that week.

When our Realtor called the next day to say our offer was accepted, we cheered, cried, happy danced, and were in overall a state of shock because we did it and were a major step closer to becoming homeowners.

Conclusion

One year later we are beyond happy we took the plunge to dive into homeownership, and love our house even more now then when we first viewed it. We also really haven fallen in love with being part of a neighborhood.

We initially discussed waiting until the Fall of 2023 to see what mortgage interest rates would have done, and are so thankful we didn’t because they were much higher then compared to when we financed our home.

The best time to buy a home is when you are ready, not when the market is perfect or ideal because that time may never come.

Becoming a homeowner is a dream that slowly evolved in time for me. I never once felt I had to have a house to be happy, but as life progressed it felt like the next natural step.
It has certainly brought challenges and growing moments this past year, but has been so rewarding.

When I feel overwhelmed by the amount of things I want to update, change, or face lift with the house, I remind myself just how lucky we are to be here. To have the roof and shelter every day and night. To have our money actually be going to an investment and not just a person. Most of all, to have a place we call our own and can put our hard work into. It really is crazy to look at old photos of where it was a year ago, and comparing to where it’s now.

I hope this post helps inform you on what home buying is like from a different and more personal perspective. It was and is hard work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything and would still want to call this home mine.

Until next time,