We bought a house?!: House Hunting Adventures

In the midst of an unprecedented time in the world, we decided to buy a house! It kind of came out of nowhere, (or at least it felt that way) but here is how it all came about.

In February, Matt and I resigned our lease at our great apartment for another year. It felt like the right choice, given that so many of our friends live downtown as well and we spend so much time around here with them – we weren’t quite ready to give that part up! Plus, with a wedding coming up this year, we decided that we would focus on one step at a time. We decided we would watch Zillow and unless the perfect thing fell into our lap, we would use the time to study and understand the market so we were ready to buy next year.

Well.. COVID happened and quickly, our 900 square foot apartment with two people working from home 24/7 was feeling quite snug, making our zillow searches more and more tempting. Over friday night cocktails, we scrolled together and a new house came on the market that felt like a great option. Would it hurt to look (safely) in person? Within an hour, we were connected with an agent and had a showing scheduled for the following morning.

We showed up for our first ever house tour the following morning to meet Jesse, who would become our fantastic realtor and our advisor through this whole process (thank you, Zillow, for your connection!) The house was cute, had a great yard with a hot tub (!!!), a recently updated kitchen and lots of great potential! It was a great house – we’d think on it and reach out if we had any additional questions.

As we pulled away, we decided that even though we liked it and it was the right kind of thing, it wasn’t “lease-breaking perfect.” Later, we found out that by the end of the day it had 3 offers, and was sold by the end of the weekend.

Although this wasn’t our house, our wheels were turning and the zillow search led us to call Jesse and get 3 more houses on the docket for the following morning.

The first house got us really excited. It felt like home! Amazing outdoor space that Matt loved, great design features that I was so excited about. One thing that overwhelmed us, it was so big! Let’s be real, anything felt big compared to our 900 square feet in Covid, but this was a giant change for us! But could the second one be the right one? It seemed so fast. We’d keep looking and see what else was out there.

We looked at 2 more houses that day, (including one foreclosure that made me excited for a design challenge, though Matt was less than enthused with the amount of work that had to be done –there we holes in the floor where the toilets had been!) Let’s face it, looking at houses was SO fun! What was the rush?

But the more we thought, the more we couldn’t get that 2nd house out of our heads. Was this it? We had had friends tell us that you shouldn’t look unless you’re ready to buy since it is SO easy to fall in love… man do I understand that now!

To speed this story up…

• Tuesday: we went back with Matt’s family to look again – maybe that would help us see this from a different perspective?
• Wednesday : Jesse took us to see 3 more houses – maybe we hadn’t seen enough houses?
• Thursday: accepted offer! We were right – it truly was the perfect house!

Moral of the story: We bought a house and really could not be more excited about it!