we are...

HOMEOWNERS! Well, we won't officially be homeowners until our closing date (May 29), but we are nearly there! Yesterday, when I went to look at the smaller bungalow in SW Minneapolis (which was adorable, but much too small), our realtor told me that our offer had finally been accepted for the house on Juliet Ave. in St. Paul. Great news! Kevin and I decided that we needed one last look at the house before making a final decision (it had been about two weeks since we'd last seen it), so we went over there for about a half an hour yesterday evening, and made the decision to buy the house!

We had the inspection on the house this morning, and everything went beautifully. Of course, there are a few minor things that came up, but they are easily fixable things. Now, after a somewhat long house-hunting process (we saw upwards of 60 houses during the past 2 months) we can relax, and enjoy daydreaming about life together in our new home - celebrating birthdays and holidays, hosting friends and family, and, one day, bringing our babies home to this house.

I can hardly wait to get in there and start repainting some rooms, changing out the carpet in the front room, and infusing the place with our personal style. We're also both really looking forward to a summer full of dinner parties, game nights, sitting on the front porch, bbq's and bocce in our backyard, and breakfast in the nook.

So, who's going to visit us first?

hmm...

Browsing at houses on the internet the other day, and I came across a cute little bungalow in SW Minneapolis (not really focusing our search there anymore, but still check the listings every now and then). It's on a great street - it's about three blocks away from the 50th and France shopping and restaurants area - and it's in great move-in condition (including a finished basement, and a fenced-in yard, and super charming kitchen). The thing is, it has only 2 bedrooms, and one bathroom - hence, the "hmm." Is this house great enough, and in a good enough location (because, despite increasing Kev's commute time, it is in a spectacular location), that we will want to sacrifice size for niceness? With the finished basement as a second living space/guest space, this would definitely get us through the first baby (and potentially through a second pregnancy), but soon after that, I think we'd have to sell and move to a bigger place. Again, hmm....

On my way to meet with the realtor, and then, since I'll be in the neighborhood, I think I'll go for a quick run around Lake Harriet - it's a lovely spring day and I could use some non-treadmill time. I'll let you know how it goes!

house-hunting blues

Good grief. I had no idea that the house-hunting process would take so long. At this point, we've seen upwards of 60 houses in SW Minneapolis and St. Paul (mostly the Mac-Groveland area), and we are starting to get a little concerned that we're not going to find the right place before our lease is up, at the end of June. Kevin's grand back-up plan involves us putting all of our stuff into storage, and then living in friends' basements until we find a house. I, for one, would REALLY like to avoid this! It's nice to know that our wonderful friends would gladly offer us temporary lodging (seriously, they are the best!), but I would love to spend the summer in our own home, fixing it up and enjoying a nice backyard, a dining room, and a front porch (these are some of our main house requirements). We are both super looking forward to having a house that we can infuse with our own personality, and to getting into different home-improvement projects (mine involve paint, refurbishing furniture, and putting my sewing machine to good use, and Kevin's involve his imaginary wood-shop, and becoming a summer apprentice to a master carpenter). Kevin is going out to see three more houses tonight (I'm taking the night off to go to Wine Club and hang out with the girls), and hopefully he'll like one of them. We'll keep you posted!

sigh...

Well, we could not quite come to an agreement on price with the sellers of our house (that's what I've come to think of it as - I love it that much), so, no deal! However, we agreed to keep the door open, just in case they change their minds in a week or two (and, with this market, there is a decent chance that this will happen). So, not terrible news, but definitely not the news we were hoping for.

In the meantime, we'll be going out to look at even more houses this weekend with our dedicated realtor, Marcia.  Man, I am SO ready for the house-search to be over. We'll keep you posted!

woohoo!

Our offer was accepted today! After a few more rounds of negotiations, the seller agreed to our terms, and now, pending Wednesday's inspection (keep your fingers crossed!), we can really start calling it "our" house! We are SO excited!

Thanks to everyone for all of the support, encouragement, and excitement. Remember, our casa is your casa!

status update!

Received the seller's counter offer tonight at around 9:30. We're submiting our response to their counter offer tomorrow afternoon - this thing is happening fast! We'll let you know what happens!

we just...

...put an offer down on a house! We looked at 8 more houses yesterday (bringing our total - including houses viewed with our realtor and houses viewed on our own - to about 45 houses), and we really like the first, third, and seventh houses we saw.

We were super excited to actually be finding homes, on super cute streets, and in our price range, that we would be more than happy to live in, but, once we walked into that seventh house ("our" house), we just knew we'd found the one. Okay, I'll be honest - I thought I knew (I have a difficult time making decisions), but Kevin knew, with total certainty, pretty much the minute we walked in the door. We loved the house (a 1925 bungalow in an awesome location and with TONS of potential) so much that, after thoroughly exploring it, we went and looked at the eighth house (super charming, with a stone fireplace and built-in bookcases, but somewhat impractical with an outdated kitchen and only one teeny tiny bathroom that was on the 2nd story), and then drove straight back to that seventh house to explore it even further and to just sit in it for about 20 minutes and let the feel of it soak in. We decided right then and there that we wanted to draft up an offer that afternoon, and after going out for celebratory drinks with our very good friends, Matt and Emily, who live just 3 blocks away from our potential new home, we met back up with Marcia, our wonderful realtor, and put together an offer! The offer didn't get submitted until this afternoon (it was so hard to wait, but we needed to get some final information from the mortgage people, and we needed to sleep on it for just one night), and now we just have to wait and see what the seller counters back with. Nerve-wracking!

The house needs some love on the curb appeal front (we are thinking of re-painting the trim a dark navy blue, and we want to paint those new cedar steps to match the house, add some window boxes, and spruce up the bottom of the stairs with big flower pots), but overall it's in great shape. The house has: new windows throughout (even in the basement), recently refinished hardwood floors (no one has lived in the home since they were refinished, so they are in lovely condition), new doors, new ceramic tile in the kitchen and bathroom, brand new stainless steel appliances (dishwasher, fridge, stove, and microwave that have never been used), a new washer and dryer, new maple cabinets in the kitchen, a remodeled bathroom, new carpet in the upstairs and in the basement, fresh new paint throughout, a new high-efficiency furnace and water heater, newly spruced up ceilings, all new lighting, new smoke/CO detectors, a new doorbell, a new roof on the 2.5-car garage, a new garage door, freshly painted exterior, new cedar decks on the front and back of the home, new sidewalk along the house, a lovley front porch (where we will put a porch swing!), a decent-sized yard, two big and airy bedrooms on the main floor and a huge master suite on the upstairs half-story, and, best of all, it's on a great block, surrounded by beautiful homes, in the Macalaster-Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul.

The house is just waiting for us to infuse it with our personality (all the newness has come with a small price - it's a bit bland right now), but it is in total move-in condition and we are already dreaming up little projects to really make it our own (anyone know anything about installing a direct-vent gas fireplace?). If we get the house (and, yes, we are aware that we must somewhat temper our excitement with the reality that we may not get the house), we are going to spend all summer making it our own, sitting on the swing in the front porch enjoying the light, and hosting friends for potlucks and outdoor bbqs. F-U-N. And, of course, we'll be waiting for friends and family from far away to come stay in our guest bedroom!

If the offer is accepted (and we hope to have that settled within the next few days), we'll still need to get an inspector in there to make sure everything is copasetic (as my dad would say), and then it would be official (well, we wouldn't officially close on the house until the end of May, but official enough to call it our own). We leave for Mexico on Friday, so it might be a bit of a squeeze to get all that done this week, but, for this home, we'll make it work!

That's the news for now and you can bet we'll be updating you the minute we hear back from the seller. Thanks to everyone for all the excitement and happy thoughts!

a home

Okay, now that Kevin and I have reviewed our financial situation, been pre-approved for a home mortgage loan, set up a timeline for ourselves, and made the official decision to move ahead with our big plan, I can excitedly announce that come this summer - no, we're not pregant - we'll be home-owners! That's right people, Tammy and Kevin are growing up, and we're buying a house to prove it. Okay, that's not why, but we do feel like we are heading into the future we've been dreaming about, and it's exciting to be experiencing this together.

We are both super excited that our goals and planning are coming together and that this is actually going to be a reality of us. For so long, it's seemed that the dream of buying a home was very very far into the future (and, if we'd moved back to CA, it probably would be). Over the past year we've made some pretty huge changes in how we manage our finances (as in, we now actually manage them now) and the reward is, literally, a dream coming true. We've become savers (pretty much for the first time in both our lives), and it feels really good. Of course, we still have plenty of room for improvement in how we manage our money (man, do we love to eat out), but progress is being made and now we can enjoy a big reward.

Anyway, it's still early on in the house-hunting process, but we've been very encouraged by what we've seen so far in our price range. We are looking for a 2-3 bedroom "starter" home in Southwest Minneapolis (you can see a map here - you'll have to zoom in a bit, and it will be on the lower left-hand corner), and, of course, I've already fallen in love with one house in particular. I know, I know, it's still early, but I can't help it. Isn't she a cutie (my new favorite way to describe the houses we're looking at)?

Whatever we end up in, it will be a modest home (we have definitely paid attention to what's happened in this country with people going crazy and buying homes they can't afford), but it will be our home and we couldn't be happier about that. We're going on our first official house-hunting tour with our realtor this Saturday, and I'll keep you all posted on what we find (although, really, it's going to have be pretty darn amazing to tear me away from my current favorite). Wish us luck!

P.S. - For those of you who have been asking us about our baby plans (we know, you're just excited - and so are we), just hold your horses - we promise, we're getting there! One thing at a time, right?