Friday, August 5, 2011

Beginning Our Journey

About 7 years ago, my husband and I bought our first house.  We were excited to leave behind the world of renting apartments and live in a house of our own.  At the time, our 1000-square-foot, 2-bedroom house was what we could afford, and it suited our needs just fine.  But we always thought of this house a starter for us...we thought we would be here about 5 years, then move on.  And though in some ways we were definitely ready to move after 5 years, in other ways we were definitely not.  But now, with our expanding family, this house is getting a bit cramped, and we are very eager to make the move.  This time, we are thinking long term, and are not looking for just a house, but a home.

We actually started this quest a little over a year ago, but with the housing market slump, it has been difficult to sell our current house.  It can be quite discouraging and frustrating that it is taking longer than we anticipated.  I have to keep reminding myself to be patient, and that things will work out...somehow, they always do.  But at the same time, I’m not the type of person to just sit around and wait for things to happen.  We have to take action.

When we first put our house on the market, we were hopeful that it would sell and we could move before baby #2 arrived.  So we went ahead and started looking at houses.  After looking at many houses, we found one we liked a lot.  So, crossing our fingers, we made an offer that was contingent upon the sale of our house, only to be denied.  Sigh.  So we kept looking, found another house we liked, made an offer, and were denied again.  Double sigh.  In order to avoid further disappointment, we decided to hold off on looking at any more houses until we had some interest in our current house.

After many showings of our house, and zero offers, we were starting to feel like we were never going to get to move.  And with baby #2’s due date quickly approaching, we thought it was in our best interest to take our house off the market for awhile, and instead focus our attention on preparing for this little one’s arrival.  It’s a good thing we did this when we did, as baby decided she was ready to meet the world a bit earlier than expected!  

So, we been reconfigured our rooms, moved furniture around, and made space for our new little bundle of joy.  After taking a month or so to just relax and enjoy our new arrival, we were ready to continue our journey.  

Unfortunately the housing market seems to be in even more of a slump now, and we haven’t had any luck selling our current house.  But we’ve decided to not let that get in the way of us finding our new home...we’ll just have to think outside the box a bit about our current house.  We may try converting it to a 3-bedroom, we may have to drop the price more than we would like, or we may have to consider renting it out for awhile.  I’m not sure which option we will choose yet, but one thing is certain:  I am ready to move!

So I decided to start this little blog to document our quest to find a new house, and I plan to continue it as we transform this new “house” into our new “home”.  I hope that you enjoy reading about our journey.

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