Buying a House continued!

At this point, we went back to the drawing board and began scouting out potential homes. We drove all over Hall County and looked at over 40 homes in a couple of days. Narrowing down options led us to about 8 to 12 that we thought we might want to see the inside of the house.

During our exploration of Hall County, we searched out one area in South Hall to look at a home that was eligible for USDA financing (100%). As we looked at this home, we saw a couple of other homes in the same neighborhood that had some potential.

We took a break from looking for a couple of days to celebrate Christmas Eve with MB's family and then on our own at home. What a wonderful time a WHITE snowy Christmas was!

Mary Beth did most of the online searching for homes, and looked at hundreds of homes to narrow down to our potential options! I looked at a lot less! Mostly, I looked at the houses MB had narrowed down.

For a couple of days, we went down to the farm to spend some time with my bros and my parents! Great times with wonderful family! Andrew and John had each gotten a Wii for Christmas, talk about funny...the Peake family playing Mario Cart....and my Dad dominates some Wii tennis!

Back to the house search, MB and I set it up with Jeff Knight to go look at houses on December 30th. We looked at 6 houses, and found a couple we really liked. The house that we liked the best was the only house still owner occupied that we had seen...and...wow...could we tell the difference...in a good way.

After praying about whether we should make an offer, we decided to do so. Long story short, they accepted our offer! We are in the process of buying the house now! The home inspection went well and barring any setbacks we will close Feb. 10th!

Under Contract for a House!

What an adventure! Our attempt at buying a house has been quite a roller coaster ride. During our search for a home, we have looked at hundreds of homes online. We have driven past at least 60 homes in attempts to pre-screen, and walked into 14. I am sure many people have similar stories of searching for the right home. In the first week of driving around with our Realtor Jeff Knight, we decided to make an offer on a house. As first time buyers new to the process of buying a house, we took lots of advice from my parents and my uncle Merwin as well as our Realtor as we decided how much money to offer, what to ask for, etc.

We made an offer for the house on December 10th, the bank had prepared a counter-offer, then much to our dismay at the time, the house became a multiple offer. We came back with our best offer a couple of days later, and our offer was accepted! At the point, we were very excited, yet for some reason, I kept feeling like something didn't feel quite right. That Sunday, Greg (MB's Dad) came to look at the house with us. Greg was an HVAC guy for 20+ years so he came to look for things that might be wrong with the house. Was there anything wrong....uh yeah. The HVAC unit only worked on emergency heat, the siding was Louisiana Pacific (although listed as hardy plank), the roof was wavy and would have needed replacement soon if not immediately, as well as other issues which we just didn't have the money to fix.

At this point, we went home and ran the numbers on what we could do monetarily. It seems that God had closed that door. Conclusion: it was time to walk away from that home. While we could have gotten a renovation mortgage to fix everything, the wise thing seemed to be to walk away. We decided that neither of us was against a little elbow grease, but a move in ready house without big ticket needs was what we should do.

To be continued....