House

You know how some people wait until the end of their 12th week of pregnancy to announce that they are expecting? I could never wait to tell people when it came to pregnancy but when it comes to home buying, I wait until the first trimester is over, so to speak. So, here it is: I am extremely happy to announce the we are buying our first home!

I have never allowed myself to dream about home-ownership because I didn't want to live in a constant state of dissatisfaction with my surroundings. But, the time had come when it made sense for us to take the giant leap from renting to owning and here we are.

We looked at a house a few weekends ago and liked it, which got us thinking about buying. It was fun to think about owning but the man doing the open house was pushy and awkward. So we called an agent named Jeff who was on a flier that we had picked up for a home that was for sale. It was kind of random but it worked out. We met him on a Saturday, he asked if we were pre-qualified, we said no. He suggested that we do that before we looked at any more houses or interview any more agents.

On Monday Colin went to a mortgage lender and got us pre-qualified. The next weekend Colin and I were celebrating our fifth anniversary by having my parents watch the kids for us while we stayed downtown. We used part of our time away from the kids to look at houses with Jeff, who we decided to use as our agent. It was exhausting in a good way. There are so many affordable houses in Spokane. In Western Washington we had always been overwhelmed by the lack of affordable housing and the general crappiness of what we could afford. It is so different here.

Anyway, after two full days of looking at lots of houses and even more online listings (hundreds), we had a top three. On Tuesday (Feb, 9 2010) we put in an offer on a house!

The house we are buying is a brand new split-level home with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, three car garage and a full unfinished basement that has a roughed in bathroom. We ended up putting in an offer above the asking price of the house because we are asking the builder to finish the basement for us and put in an a/c unit. Our basement will have a large family room, another bedroom, another bathroom and a laundry room. We can't wait until our closing date March 24th, 2010!

Here are a few pictures of the house. I'll put up more later when I can take some with our camera since these were taken during construction by the builder.

The outside

Living room (view from dining room)

Dining room (view from living room)

Kitchen (view from dining room)

Oh, and we're also having the builder put a microwave in place of that hood above the oven.