This story comes a bit late, but hey, so did our first home purchase, right?
In the midst of these crazy times where we are all stuck in our homes in the name of social distancing (if you’re reading this in the future – we’re just a few weeks into the madness of Coronavirus / COVID-19), I figured now is a good time to share how things can unexpectedly come together. For those of you who have waited so long to hear it, here’s the story of how our dream home came back to us after a messy, failed first attempt, and some things I learned along the way.
If you’ve ever bought a home before, then you know that it’s an emotional experience. Our home purchasing process was no exception! If you’ve been here for a while, you may have heard my story about the heartache of losing our dream home and how we used gratitude to overcome that difficult situation. If not, you can read about it here.
Now, let’s start at the beginning…
The moment we walked inside, we knew we’d found our home.
After looking at hundreds of homes online and going to see over 50, we found our dream home. The right price, the right location, and everything we needed or could ever want. With a strong offer and heartfelt letter, we prayed they’d accept our offer over the other one they’d received.
We hardly slept that night, anxiously waiting to know if our dream home would become ours. Relief washed over us once we received the signed acceptance, and we wasted no time securing a loan and scheduling inspections. Of course, nothing is perfect. Our inspection came back with a laundry list of repairs. Yet, that didn’t scare us away. This was our dream home; we were willing to put in the work (and time and money).
We’d already spoken about this home as if it were ours.
It hurt deeply when we realized this may not work out. We’d already made plans for what we wanted to do, from furniture and decor to potential renovations. I even created a whole pinterest board with ideas (and kept it secret because I knew I was getting ahead of myself). We’d raved over how absolutely perfect this home was for us and how it checked off Every. Single. Box.
I don’t want to give too much detail here, so I’ll leave it at this: after completing some inspections, the sellers disallowed access to the property. This meant we had not way to assess the cost of the (fairly substantial) repairs. We felt at a loss. Could we justify buying this home not knowing how significant the repair costs may actually be? We spent two full days seeking as much information as possible from outside sources to figure out how extensive the repairs might be. However, every source warned us that without actually seeing the home, they could not provide an accurate estimate, nor could we make an informed decision. How could we justify purchasing our first home with such a large unknown?
In complete turmoil, we realized, without the terms of the contract met, we were left with no choice. Devastated. Heartbroken. Depleted. We sent the termination letter. By this time, I was completely torn apart inside. I said a constant prayer to God, “We love you. We trust you. Your will be done.” This is how I reminded myself that God had a plan for us and that his plan is always good, even if we don’t see it at the time.
By this point, we had zero hope of buying this house.
Fast forward a month later and the termination letter remained unsigned. We’d asked to speak with the sellers directly many times, feeling that if we could just talk to them we could clear this all up, but to no avail. We even tried mailing them a letter as a final attempt to open the lines of communication, but we never heard back.
To make matters worse, our deposit was stuck in escrow and couldn’t be released until the termination letter was signed by both parties. Without any way to communicate with the sellers, we resorted to the courthouse to at least get our deposit back. We waited a month to hear back on our court date only to find out that the sellers could not be served as they no longer lived at that address. My stomach sunk. I just wanted to give up! All the stress and heartache, and we were stuck in a hopeless situation. During this time, I committed to writing a daily gratitude journal to help me see the good in the situation.
Four months in and still under contract to buy “our home”.
After this ordeal, we hardly had interest in looking at more homes, but the desire to buy was still very much there. We browsed through the newly listed homes, comparing every feature to the home we almost bought. In our minds, nothing stood up! So, we began looking at building a custom home. Of course, a newly built home costs a bit more. And, while we could handle it, we were a bit hesitant. Nevertheless, we felt out of options, and began taking baby steps forward.
Still, something felt off to me. Maybe because I knew our money was still held up in escrow, or because we technically were still under contract with an unsigned termination letter. About a month later, my in-laws came to visit us. By then, we’d found a piece of land that was affordable and in a nice neighborhood. Although, we still hadn’t committed to anything. We showed them the land, and they asked if we could show them “Our Home”. I’ll admit, part of me was dying to go back and see it, and part of me wanted to go hide in a corner and pretend this all never happened. As we turned into the neighborhood, I almost cried with longing for what I thought should’ve been ours.
My heart sank when I saw the for sale sign still up and marked pending for us. We were still under contract to buy this home, and I still wanted to. As we drove up the driveway, my in-laws commented on how they could see why we liked it. Of course, we couldn’t go inside since it wasn’t open for showings, they just wanted to see what almost was. After my in-laws flew home, my husband and I talked about that home once more.
Two days after visiting our almost home, the most unexpected thing happened…
A realtor reached out to us via email asking if we still wanted to make this purchase happen. When I first read the email, I thought it was a joke. This can’t be real! I thought maybe they somehow knew that drove up to see it and were angry. However, it turned out the sellers asked someone else for help; I guess they felt as stuck in this situation as we did. My husband and I looked at each other. We’d been thinking the same thing this whole time, but didn’t want to admit it: We still wanted to buy this house.
This surprised me a bit. Given all of the heartache we’d been through, I thought the bitterness toward the situation would taint the sweetness of buying our home. However, I think the opposite was true: it made us appreciate it that much more. This all happened about a week before we planned to move forward with buying land. Talk about crazy timing! We halted our plans and refocused on the dream home we thought we’d lost.
Everything seemingly fell into place at that point. The new realtor had the sellers sign the original termination letter, returning our deposit to us. Then, he arranged for us to finish the due diligence process BEFORE submitting a new offer. The home remained unlisted and they gave us a few weeks to access the property to get the estimates we couldn’t before. This alone was such a huge blessing to us! It truly felt like a miracle. Finally, we pre-negotiated and wrote a new offer that we knew both sides were happy with. I feel like this goes unsaid, but, our offer was accepted and we closed on our first home just a few weeks later!
Learning Through Tough Times
All in all, it took us 5 months from writing our original offer to closing on our home. As I write this, I still can’t believe the strange and completely unexpected turn of events that took place to bring our home back to us. When this first started coming back together, I couldn’t help but ask why we had to go through all of that in the first place? Why didn’t it just work out the first time? Then, I went back and read my own words about it all falling through. That, as painful as it was, it truly was good for us. That through the heartbreak, we came to rely on God, to rely on each other, and to exercise grace and gratitude when we really didn’t feel like it.
Now, going through the craziness of stay home orders and the massive effects of the pandemic on every aspect of our lives, I’m incredibly thankful to have our home. I can say without a doubt that it was worth all of the drama, and that I’m even grateful for the process. We always want things to work out according to our own plans, but during the difficult times we experience the most growth. I know there’s a lot of uncertainty right now, but I also know that this will all come to an end, and I pray that we can all come out on the other side better for it.