(Disclaimer- this is the longest written post I've ever written! Sorry it's so lengthy)
If you would have asked us if we had intentions of moving in the near future, both mine and John's answer would have been No. Quite honestly, we loved our house, loved the location to both of our works (less than a 10 minute commute), loved how close we are to the amenities, enjoyed (for the most part) our neighbors, and in general enjoyed most things about our quiet, little home. But sometimes life throws you a curve ball and the unexpected can ultimately happen.
Now if you know my husband, he is constantly looking for the next "thing": cars, Craig's list finds, real estate, random tidbits that catch his eye online. He is always searching for what's out there, he likes to say that it keeps him up to date. He also likes to know what's available in case the right "thing" is out there for him or us.
To make things more clear, we have been "looking" to possibly move, but we had our sights for this to happen in maybe the next 5 years or so. John is always looking and showing potential homes to me online. I'm sure like many people, through all the houses you "see", you are forming the "perfect" house in your mind. Through all the online searching you start to develop your list of things you'd like and things you dislike. Our lists for each seemed un-ending....and at times I have said that we will never move, we (read John) is too picky.
Friday morning, October 10th, as the kids and I were starting our breakfast, John calls me at 8:30am. Odd for him to call after he hasn't been to work all that long, but whatever. Ben Vogel had text him about a house that had just been listed that day for sale in their neighborhood, so John checked it out. Immediately he called me to have me look at it. I quick peeked at it on my phone, but told him I'd get around to really looking at it on the computer when we were done. About an hour later I called John back after I fired up the computer, it really was a beautiful home. John was headed into a meeting but said, "Call the realtor, lets see if we can check it out tonight."
At 5:30pm, we dropped the kids off at Ben and Diana's and went to our first walk through of the home, the very first day it was listed, the first people to come through. To our surprise, we left a little speechless. As we headed back to the Vogel's to pick up our kids, Ben said to us, "Well.." and John and I were at a loss for words, there really was so much to process because it was such a great house. This house had more of our wants/likes so it really gave us both something to think about. That night and next day was lots of talking, processing, wondering, sputtering the what ifs. We were really interested in this house, it was certainly enough to get the wheels turning in that this house may be the one. But were we really ready?
On Sunday there was an open house. John decided to head back over to check the place out again. I needed to sleep as I had worked Sat night and was headed back in on Sunday, but he had more questions and wanted to look more closely at some of the things we couldn't remember. As we ate dinner Sunday night, we talked about the house some more. We decided to make an offer to the seller on our dream home. This house was too good to pass up and we didn't want to miss out if this was going to happen.
We waited a few days....and waited some more... and finally heard back from the sellers later that week. They wouldn't accept our offer because of the contingency we included that we needed to sell our current house. They didn't want other potential buyers to be turned off if there was a pending offer out there. John and I were a little bit frustrated, but ultimately understood their concerns.
We spent the next week going back and forth between the realtor about what to do. We didn't want to list our house and sell it if we weren't going to buy the dream house we had offered on. We also didn't want to sell our house, and have the dream house sell underneath us, leaving us homeless. There was a lot of uncertainty and a lot of ups and downs. John also felt we could sell our house without a realtor, to help save a lot of money, but we didn't have much time, and we were up against a lot to try to sell our house without much exposure. We were running out of time as it was October, almost November and not many people will decide to move in the winter.
At some point in our 2 week process of what to do, we received a call from our dream house's realtor that they had received another offer that also had a contingency (of needing to sell). The dream home owners were not going to accept that one as well, but now we were starting to worry that this dream home might sell. So after much debate and back and forths, we decided to go with the same realtor (of our potential dream home) and list our house. Signing the papers to officially list it was a little sad, yet exciting at the same time. We knew that if buying the dream house was going to happen, we needed to sell our current home rather quickly so we wouldn't miss out. Once again, we had to sit and wait... as well as clean our house to perfection, de-clutter a bit, and prepare for possible showings if anyone was interested. On Thursday, October 30th, we officially listed our home, by Friday morning the reality company's For Sale sign was sitting in our front yard.
It was hard to not wonder and doubt if things were going to work out. I tried to keep my excitement in check as I didn't want to get my hopes up. I knew if things didn't work out, I would be crushed. In some part of my mind I had already moved us in and was decorating the dream house. I think it's hard not to do that. But we tried our best to go about the day-to-day and wait and see.
Halloween was smack-dab in there to help keep us occupied. We had plans to trick-or-treat with the Vogel's in their neighborhood, which would take us right past our dream home. Even with the cold and rainy/wet conditions, there were still TONS of kids and families walking around trick-or-treating. This only fueled the fire a little more and excited us to think that we could possibly become a part of this neighborhood. Both John and I wanted that for our kids, our family. We wanted to have a neighborhood feel, with kids everywhere playing outside, playing with each other, having younger families around to have a good time with that is within walking distance from your house. The draw of the neighborhood was so exciting, and Halloween night really showed us that.
Much to our surprise, around 9pm on Halloween night, John received a call from our realtor to schedule a showing for the next day, Saturday. We were both excited and now nervous for what was to come. I don't know about John, but it was a restless sleep for me and so much was going on in my head.
Saturday morning arrived and we prepared for our house showing. The kids were tucked away over at my in-laws and John was going to be at the showing as our realtor was in Vegas (perfect timing!). I anxiously waited for John's call to let me know when they were finished. About an hour later, he called and they were done. All of that build-up, nervousness, hoping that this person could be interested enough to want to make our home theirs... these are some overwhelming feelings! Later in the day, our realtor contacted us to say she heard things went well, but that was it. And now...more waiting.
Later that night, as I had just finished putting Noah to bed, John called to me to come check something out. I walked into the living room and he tells me that I will never believe this as he hands me his phone. I take a look at the phone which was open to an OFFER on our house!!!! Holy cow!! This was just crazy! I believe I kept saying "shut up!" This didn't seem real to me, I knew it could be possible, but it didn't seem like it was.
We had 48 hours to counter or the offer was off the table. We took some time on Sunday to really consider the offer and what we would counter back with, as we knew a counter on our part was inevitable. In the meantime, we had another call from our realtor that someone else wanted to come see it. We decided to let the second party interested come through, just in case the first offer fell through. On Monday morning we showed the house to the other interested party. They were fully aware that we had an offer and if they were interested at all, they had to decide that day with their best possible offer. That buyers' realtor let us know they would be putting their offer out there soon.
Now we sat with 2 offers on our house. We needed to make a choice and get things finalized so we wouldn't miss out on this sale. Ultimately we decided to accept the first offer and submitted our counter to her. She officially accepted on Tuesday morning, November 4th!!
In the meantime, we submitted our offer on our dream home. After one counter from them, we officially accepted and signed on our new house on Tuesday night! We were home sellers/home buyers in less than one week from our house listing.
We officially closed on December 12th. We were able to do both the sale of and purchase of our new house at the same time, which made things easier.
What a whirlwind of events!! In less than one month, we found a dream house, were able to sell our current home, and purchase the dream house! God works in mysterious/amazing ways indeed. If buying our dream home was in the plans for us, everything needed to work out perfectly, and thankfully it did. It was an emotional, nerve-wracking, scary, sad, intense process, but in the end, everything worked out as planned.
