Buying our house…chapter 1

Me: “Are we really going to do this?”

Cory: “Yep!”

Me: …long deep breath… “Ok… Now what?”

Cory: “I don’t know! You’re the Realtor!”

This folks is the deep conversation that Cory and I had in early June of this year as we pulled away from the house we would eventually buy in Clear Lake.

Maybe I should back up a little bit…

Cory and I have dreamed of owning a house in Clear Lake for a long time. For years we’ve spent the better parts of our summers, almost every weekend in Clear Lake. In the early years we sponged off of friends and slept on sleeper sofas in their campers, then there was the aptly named “shack” we rented for 3 years, then another 3 years in the apartment across from the DNR boat ramp and then the last 4 years in our own camper in the Deer Valley campground on the Ventura side of the lake.

We have some truly great memories of all of these places and times but still we’ve always wanted a house. A house we could stay in/visit all year round. A house where we could invite friends and family to stay.  A house we could call our own, make our own. We had looked on and off but never found the right one. We wanted the American Dream.

Fast forward to a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June. Cory and I were just starting to pack up things & shut down the camper for the weekend when we g0t a text from our friends… “Stop over. Have something to run past you.” Hmmm… that’s kinda cryptic. Oh what the hell, let’s go see what they’re up to.

“I think the neighbor is ready to sell his house again.”

And that folks… is where this journey really begins.

You see, their neighbor had his house listed for sale 3-4 years earlier but never got it sold and I had made a comment one day that if it ever came up for sale again…

So what did we do? We sent the neighbor over to knock on his door, invited him over, chit chatted over a cold beverage on their deck and after about 10 minutes we just blurted out… “Do you want to sell your house?” Pretty sure caught off guard would be the understatement of the year!

Neighbor: “Umm maybe… I guess… I kinda thought about it…”

Me: “Great! Cory and I would be interested. Can we look at it?”

Neighbor: “Now? It’s not really ready… I wasn’t really planning on… but ok, sure…”

Me: “Awesome, right now would be perfect. Just so you know I am a Realtor but Cory and I are looking for a property for ourselves. I’m not looking at it in any professional capacity, just something for us personally.” *State law dictates I have to inform him of that, more on this topic later!*

Off we go… me, Cory and our friends to tour the house. My thoughts… It’s not very big, 2 beds 1 1/2 baths… there are bright orange counter tops (think Home Depot orange), great view of the lake… plastic on every windows, wait it’s June… wow, he’s got a lot of stuff in here… 4 couches & 3 chairs & a treadmill… dammit Brandi look at the house not the stuff… oh ya, the garage… omg, you can’t even walk in the garage… I think it’s pretty big though…

As we walked back to the front of the house our friends made a quick get away so that Cory and I could talk to him on our own. We asked a few questions, got a little background… house needs a roof pretty bad, he’s got an estimate… mechanicals are in the crawl space, they’re pretty old… asking price? He shot us a price… don’t gasp out loud… we can do this I thought to myself! I could feel my heart race. Can he see my heart race? Cause it feels like my heart is gonna jump out of my chest. OMG.

Approximately 12 minutes after we’d first stepped inside his front door I heard myself say… “Thanks for letting us look, we’re very interested. We just need a little time to talk it over & get pre-approved for financing. I’ll call you this week.”

Yep, you heard me. We weren’t even pre-approved.

But we’d already fallen in love with the house.

Deep breaths… big, deep breaths…

~  to be continued  ~