This is very lengthy .. but I wanted to be thorough.
Our housing situation has been in limbo for almost exactly a year. One year ago on December 22 (give or take) Jon got the job that brought us to Arizona. So, we knew then that the house we were living in wasn't really ours anymore. (At least, that's what I started to tell myself to "detach" from the house so we could sell it.)
This housing story has so many twists and turns, learning experiences, and heartbreak that it would be a shame to not document it very well.
We received an offer on our house in Minnesota after it had been on the market for 22 days. Another month went by and we moved to Arizona and someone else moved into our old house. When we got to Arizona, we moved into corporate, or temporary, housing. It was a three-bedroom apartment in Scottsdale only ten minutes away from Jon's office. It seemed perfect.
Except that it was on the top floor.
Anyone who has rambunctious children knows that keeping those children sitting all day long, or walking softly from room to room, is a losing battle. We could have extended our stay in that apartment, but we felt that our family would be better suited in a first floor apartment.
So, when we finally realized that we would not be buying a house right away and moving into it before our 45-days-paid-corporate-housing expired, we decided to move into an apartment in the same complex. We figured that we wouldn't be in it very long, so it was no big deal. (Ha ha ha.)
We were working with a realtor that Jon found before the entire family moved out. A really nice lady, named Sandy. She showed us house, after house, after house. We made an offer on one of the houses we saw the day after we got to Phoenix. And, then we waited, and waited, and waited. After four weeks of hearing almost nothing from the seller's realtor, we decided to rescind our offer. Yes, we call that one: Short Sale #1.
After looking at many more homes, we made an offer on another house. It was a straight sale, and looked really nice. I even blogged about the house, exhibiting my excitement to finally get out of our apartment and start settling down into our new place ... a place not in limbo. Then, we had the inspection and found out that there were some funny things going on with the electrical in the house. Not only that, but we all of a sudden just had a bad feeling about going through with the sale. So, we backed out. That is called: House #2.
With House #2, we asked the seller to fix all the problems. They said they wouldn't, and we said we'd walk away. They came back and said that they'd fix the problems. And, we still walked away. To this day, I'm sure our realtor doesn't understand why we didn't buy that house. She even referenced that house later. But, for some reason, we started to feel uneasy about purchasing that house. So, we backed out, and started our search again. We found a house that met a lot of our desires/requirements: it was in a cul-de-sac (check!), had six bedrooms (check!), a large kitchen (check!), and a larger yard (check!). The only draw back was that it was a short sale. But, we figured we had a lease agreement for seven months and that was plenty of time to hear back from the bank. We made an offer. Then, waited ... and waited ... and waited. Unfortunately, the realtor selling this house was the same realtor selling Short Sale #1. She was evasive and uninformative. We waited for several weeks, then the bank came back and counter offered, asking us for $20k more than our original offer. We said that we would pay what our original offer was, that the house was only worth that much (and it really was). Then, the bank came back and asked for $40k more. WE were kind of flabbergasted at their math skills. Why would we pay $40k more when we wouldn't even pay $20k more??? So, we decided to look for another house. This happened in the middle of June. This one is called: Short Sale #2, or the Cavedale House.
We started looking again and found a house that I remembered seeing on our very first house hunting trip. At this time, Jon was worried about making enough money to afford the houses that we had been looking at. He now had a sales job and wasn't sure that he'd be able to meet all of his goals in order to get enough commission. So, we dropped our price range, and started looking again. The sellers of this house we found this time around had dropped their original price enough that we entertained the thought of buying this house. And, we almost did. It was a short sale, we made an offer at the end of June and the bank was ready to sign by the week of Thanksgiving. We waited for that house because we felt good about it and like that house had everything we needed. This is called: Short Sale #3, or the Galvin House.
In the middle of October, Jon got a new job. At the time we were still waiting to hear back from the bank. We decided to look for another house, and because his new job was a "work-from-home" job, we expanded our search area in the hopes we could get a larger lot or house for the same price as the house we had our current offer on.
This is when our realtor hit the fan. She was done dealing with us. But, I know that the reason all of the previous houses didn't work out was that we were supposed to wait until Jon got the new job. How could I explain to her that our Heavenly Father had a plan for us, and those houses weren't a part of them? There's no way she'd understand that. Anyway, she sent us an email saying that we were looking in an area of the Phoenix valley that she wasn't very familiar with and felt that someone on the west side would be more suited to helping us. In other words, she quit. If she had hung in there for just two more weeks, she would have been paid for all of her hard work, but, oh well.
One of our friends from church told us about his friend who is a realtor/attorney. He thought that his friend, Jason, would be able to help us out with the short sale process a little bit more than our previous realtor. So, we gave him a call and he showed us houses the following Saturday (October 30).
The very first house he showed us is the house I am standing in right now. It is our house. We fell in love with it right away. It was lender owned. It has five bedrooms and a den (a must for Jon's office), a huge loft, a super fantastic kitchen, it is in the bend of the road, with only two neighbors, and larger yard. I can't wait to show you all pictures. We made an offer that day.
The following week we heard back from the bank, who countered our offer. After the appraisal, we discovered the house was actually worth less than our first offer. The bank was kind enough to take the appraisal, and we were ecstatic. But, the story doesn't end there. For weeks, we tried to get everything squared away. We were told that we would be in our house by the first week of December. We actually believed that and turned in our thirty days notice with the rental office at our apartment complex. The first week of December came, and we still hadn't been able to sign the papers. On December 6th, we signed our papers then waited for the lender to sign the papers and give us the keys. The title company needed more money from us. We figured we would be able to move the following weekend. When I dropped the children off at school on Friday, December 10th, I withdrew them from their Scottsdale school. But, we did not get the keys that day. So, the entire next week I spent four hours everyday driving the children to and from their new school because the lender was waiting to find out if the HOA fees had been paid (which they had not). We paid the back fees in the hopes we would be able to get into the house sooner. Our vacate date was set for December 18. There was no moving that date as they had already rented our apartment on the 27th.
On December 17, we waited all day for word about getting our keys. By 2:30 p.m. we figured we would not be getting into out house that weekend. Now we had to consider our options (which were very, very few). Jon's sister, Norine, offered to let us live with them until we could move into our house. This kind of was our only option as we had no idea when we would hear back from the title company about our house. So, we moved all of our things out of our apartment and storage garage into a huge uhaul truck and Norine's trailer, and moved into Norine's house.
During our move, things were not looking good for my brother's newborn baby, who was sick in the hospital. It was killing me that I couldn't just go up there because of our stupid move, and resolved to go to Utah as soon as possible.
We lived at Norine's house from Saturday through Tuesday, on which day we finally got our papers back and the keys for our house. That afternoon I found an exterminator to come over and take care of the black widows. I was running late and gave him the code for the key box so he could get started while I was still travelling to get there. Funny thing is that when Jon suggested I do that, I was very hesitant to do it. Later, I found out why.
As the exterminator was taking me around showing me everything that he had taken care of, I asked him if he had put the keys on a counter in the kitchen or if he still had them. He started to search his pockets and could not find the key. I texted Jon, "HE LOST OUR KEYS!!!" Jon immediately called me back and was irate ... that may be a little bit harsh. He wasn't pleased. We spent a good 15 minutes or so looking for the keys to our house. As far as we were both concerned, they were gone. Great. The only keys and they were misplaced by someone else. Thankfully, I finally found them in the lock of the garage door. After finding the keys, I took my younger children to my aunt's house and Eliza and I came back home (still a shock to stay that) to meet Jon with the truck.
That night, we picked up our stuff and moved across the valley to our new home. There is no way we could have done with without the help of Norine and her family. Literally. They were the only ones to help us move our things into our house. They are lifesavers.
Wednesday we spent unpacking, repacking, and wrapping Christmas presents. Eliza and Jon set up the Christmas tree. We put the Christmas present under the tree Wednesday night. Thursday morning we woke up and celebrated Christmas, then that afternoon we packed up the van and headed to Utah. My brother's little baby passed away the Tuesday we moved into our house, so we were going up to be with them for the days surrounding the funeral.
When we got back on Thursday afternoon, we started unpacking some more. My aunt and cousin were so wonderful and cleaned a great majority of our house while we were gone. Friday was our busy day. We had the cable guy, the DirecTV guy, and the appliance guy coming. See, we'd been without a fridge this entire time. It felt so good to finally get our fridge (another wholly crazy story). On Saturday, Jon's brother and sister and their families came over ... and it was wonderful to actually host! I'd been missing that. We felt like we couldn't really host anyone in our apartment because it was so small.
And, now we are settling in. Each and every day I walk around the house and exclaim that I can't believe we live here, that this is our house. I feel like I'm waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell us that they are back, and want us to leave. It really is a dream come true. The children have been walking to and from school (only a three-minute walk!), and are finally feeling better about their classes. We are finally feeling like we've moved to Arizona, and we are ready to start building lasting friendships and get to know our little community! Hurrah! It's finally happened! We are homeowners!
Our housing situation has been in limbo for almost exactly a year. One year ago on December 22 (give or take) Jon got the job that brought us to Arizona. So, we knew then that the house we were living in wasn't really ours anymore. (At least, that's what I started to tell myself to "detach" from the house so we could sell it.)
This housing story has so many twists and turns, learning experiences, and heartbreak that it would be a shame to not document it very well.
We received an offer on our house in Minnesota after it had been on the market for 22 days. Another month went by and we moved to Arizona and someone else moved into our old house. When we got to Arizona, we moved into corporate, or temporary, housing. It was a three-bedroom apartment in Scottsdale only ten minutes away from Jon's office. It seemed perfect.
Except that it was on the top floor.
Anyone who has rambunctious children knows that keeping those children sitting all day long, or walking softly from room to room, is a losing battle. We could have extended our stay in that apartment, but we felt that our family would be better suited in a first floor apartment.
So, when we finally realized that we would not be buying a house right away and moving into it before our 45-days-paid-corporate-housing expired, we decided to move into an apartment in the same complex. We figured that we wouldn't be in it very long, so it was no big deal. (Ha ha ha.)
We were working with a realtor that Jon found before the entire family moved out. A really nice lady, named Sandy. She showed us house, after house, after house. We made an offer on one of the houses we saw the day after we got to Phoenix. And, then we waited, and waited, and waited. After four weeks of hearing almost nothing from the seller's realtor, we decided to rescind our offer. Yes, we call that one: Short Sale #1.
After looking at many more homes, we made an offer on another house. It was a straight sale, and looked really nice. I even blogged about the house, exhibiting my excitement to finally get out of our apartment and start settling down into our new place ... a place not in limbo. Then, we had the inspection and found out that there were some funny things going on with the electrical in the house. Not only that, but we all of a sudden just had a bad feeling about going through with the sale. So, we backed out. That is called: House #2.
With House #2, we asked the seller to fix all the problems. They said they wouldn't, and we said we'd walk away. They came back and said that they'd fix the problems. And, we still walked away. To this day, I'm sure our realtor doesn't understand why we didn't buy that house. She even referenced that house later. But, for some reason, we started to feel uneasy about purchasing that house. So, we backed out, and started our search again. We found a house that met a lot of our desires/requirements: it was in a cul-de-sac (check!), had six bedrooms (check!), a large kitchen (check!), and a larger yard (check!). The only draw back was that it was a short sale. But, we figured we had a lease agreement for seven months and that was plenty of time to hear back from the bank. We made an offer. Then, waited ... and waited ... and waited. Unfortunately, the realtor selling this house was the same realtor selling Short Sale #1. She was evasive and uninformative. We waited for several weeks, then the bank came back and counter offered, asking us for $20k more than our original offer. We said that we would pay what our original offer was, that the house was only worth that much (and it really was). Then, the bank came back and asked for $40k more. WE were kind of flabbergasted at their math skills. Why would we pay $40k more when we wouldn't even pay $20k more??? So, we decided to look for another house. This happened in the middle of June. This one is called: Short Sale #2, or the Cavedale House.
We started looking again and found a house that I remembered seeing on our very first house hunting trip. At this time, Jon was worried about making enough money to afford the houses that we had been looking at. He now had a sales job and wasn't sure that he'd be able to meet all of his goals in order to get enough commission. So, we dropped our price range, and started looking again. The sellers of this house we found this time around had dropped their original price enough that we entertained the thought of buying this house. And, we almost did. It was a short sale, we made an offer at the end of June and the bank was ready to sign by the week of Thanksgiving. We waited for that house because we felt good about it and like that house had everything we needed. This is called: Short Sale #3, or the Galvin House.
In the middle of October, Jon got a new job. At the time we were still waiting to hear back from the bank. We decided to look for another house, and because his new job was a "work-from-home" job, we expanded our search area in the hopes we could get a larger lot or house for the same price as the house we had our current offer on.
This is when our realtor hit the fan. She was done dealing with us. But, I know that the reason all of the previous houses didn't work out was that we were supposed to wait until Jon got the new job. How could I explain to her that our Heavenly Father had a plan for us, and those houses weren't a part of them? There's no way she'd understand that. Anyway, she sent us an email saying that we were looking in an area of the Phoenix valley that she wasn't very familiar with and felt that someone on the west side would be more suited to helping us. In other words, she quit. If she had hung in there for just two more weeks, she would have been paid for all of her hard work, but, oh well.
One of our friends from church told us about his friend who is a realtor/attorney. He thought that his friend, Jason, would be able to help us out with the short sale process a little bit more than our previous realtor. So, we gave him a call and he showed us houses the following Saturday (October 30).
The very first house he showed us is the house I am standing in right now. It is our house. We fell in love with it right away. It was lender owned. It has five bedrooms and a den (a must for Jon's office), a huge loft, a super fantastic kitchen, it is in the bend of the road, with only two neighbors, and larger yard. I can't wait to show you all pictures. We made an offer that day.
The following week we heard back from the bank, who countered our offer. After the appraisal, we discovered the house was actually worth less than our first offer. The bank was kind enough to take the appraisal, and we were ecstatic. But, the story doesn't end there. For weeks, we tried to get everything squared away. We were told that we would be in our house by the first week of December. We actually believed that and turned in our thirty days notice with the rental office at our apartment complex. The first week of December came, and we still hadn't been able to sign the papers. On December 6th, we signed our papers then waited for the lender to sign the papers and give us the keys. The title company needed more money from us. We figured we would be able to move the following weekend. When I dropped the children off at school on Friday, December 10th, I withdrew them from their Scottsdale school. But, we did not get the keys that day. So, the entire next week I spent four hours everyday driving the children to and from their new school because the lender was waiting to find out if the HOA fees had been paid (which they had not). We paid the back fees in the hopes we would be able to get into the house sooner. Our vacate date was set for December 18. There was no moving that date as they had already rented our apartment on the 27th.
On December 17, we waited all day for word about getting our keys. By 2:30 p.m. we figured we would not be getting into out house that weekend. Now we had to consider our options (which were very, very few). Jon's sister, Norine, offered to let us live with them until we could move into our house. This kind of was our only option as we had no idea when we would hear back from the title company about our house. So, we moved all of our things out of our apartment and storage garage into a huge uhaul truck and Norine's trailer, and moved into Norine's house.
During our move, things were not looking good for my brother's newborn baby, who was sick in the hospital. It was killing me that I couldn't just go up there because of our stupid move, and resolved to go to Utah as soon as possible.
We lived at Norine's house from Saturday through Tuesday, on which day we finally got our papers back and the keys for our house. That afternoon I found an exterminator to come over and take care of the black widows. I was running late and gave him the code for the key box so he could get started while I was still travelling to get there. Funny thing is that when Jon suggested I do that, I was very hesitant to do it. Later, I found out why.
As the exterminator was taking me around showing me everything that he had taken care of, I asked him if he had put the keys on a counter in the kitchen or if he still had them. He started to search his pockets and could not find the key. I texted Jon, "HE LOST OUR KEYS!!!" Jon immediately called me back and was irate ... that may be a little bit harsh. He wasn't pleased. We spent a good 15 minutes or so looking for the keys to our house. As far as we were both concerned, they were gone. Great. The only keys and they were misplaced by someone else. Thankfully, I finally found them in the lock of the garage door. After finding the keys, I took my younger children to my aunt's house and Eliza and I came back home (still a shock to stay that) to meet Jon with the truck.
That night, we picked up our stuff and moved across the valley to our new home. There is no way we could have done with without the help of Norine and her family. Literally. They were the only ones to help us move our things into our house. They are lifesavers.
Wednesday we spent unpacking, repacking, and wrapping Christmas presents. Eliza and Jon set up the Christmas tree. We put the Christmas present under the tree Wednesday night. Thursday morning we woke up and celebrated Christmas, then that afternoon we packed up the van and headed to Utah. My brother's little baby passed away the Tuesday we moved into our house, so we were going up to be with them for the days surrounding the funeral.
When we got back on Thursday afternoon, we started unpacking some more. My aunt and cousin were so wonderful and cleaned a great majority of our house while we were gone. Friday was our busy day. We had the cable guy, the DirecTV guy, and the appliance guy coming. See, we'd been without a fridge this entire time. It felt so good to finally get our fridge (another wholly crazy story). On Saturday, Jon's brother and sister and their families came over ... and it was wonderful to actually host! I'd been missing that. We felt like we couldn't really host anyone in our apartment because it was so small.
And, now we are settling in. Each and every day I walk around the house and exclaim that I can't believe we live here, that this is our house. I feel like I'm waiting for someone to knock on the door and tell us that they are back, and want us to leave. It really is a dream come true. The children have been walking to and from school (only a three-minute walk!), and are finally feeling better about their classes. We are finally feeling like we've moved to Arizona, and we are ready to start building lasting friendships and get to know our little community! Hurrah! It's finally happened! We are homeowners!
Comments
...Some things are hard to explain to others when it involves the Spirit and some faith.
I'm so glad you finally have a home and can really settle in Arizona! I can't wait to see pictures of your new home. :)
I am so happy for you and your family!! Congrats you made it : )
Take care