He is in the Details

We are currently just days away from closing on our new home, hopefully our forever home. The process of selling our home and finding a new one was not without stress, but I wanted to document our process because God's hand has been in every detail, and we praise Him for His faithfulness. It may be boring for anyone but Matt and me, but I don't want to forget the details.

When we bought our first home 5.5 years ago, it was never intended to be our forever home. We planned to stay in it for several years, until we outgrew it, and then find something bigger. We have three bedrooms, and Matt and I have always wanted at least three kiddos (and ideally they can each have their own room), so we figured by the time we we started thinking about Baby #3, we'd look for something bigger and start the process. In our plans that looked like Spring 2015.

But interest rates are super low right now and no one expects them to stay so low for much longer. After receiving counsel and advice from a few people, Matt and I decided it would be a better financial decision to go ahead and sell/buy sooner to save money on interest payments. Even though we thought our current house value would increase some and we'd have more time to save for a bigger down payment if we waited another couple of years, we also believed that rising interest rates would easily offset any savings we might have had by waiting, so we made the decision to put our house on the market.

We planned to try and sell our house without using a realtor to save over $4,500 in commission. Matt heard of a realtor from a coworker who would list our house on the MLS for a small flat fee, so we could still have the advertising of a full listing without paying thousands of dollars. That was such a great decision. Our realtor has been so helpful, and while we did do most of the work ourselves (did our own showings, took our own photos, made our own fliers), she has been involved in every step of our contract and negotiations with our buyer's realtor. She has been a blessing for sure.

Our house was on the market for six weeks when we found a buyer. We had a few showings the first week it was for sale, and then it was dry for another month. We were a little discouraged but knew it was a slow time in the market, and also knew that we didn't really have much to lose. We didn't have to sell it by any certain date. Matt was out of town for a men's retreat when we had back to back showings scheduled, so I did the showings. The first showing that weekend led to an offer! I think the back to back showings helped because it made the buyer feel a little extra pressure to make a (good) offer quickly. We also found out that our buyer's realtor works for a man from our church who Matt sought counsel from about our selling process. He really is the one who encouraged us to go ahead and sell now because of rising interest rates. We joked that Sam told us to put our house on the market and because of it, he was making money off of the sale. Really though, it was a sign from God that He was active and involved in the sale of our home. We were very pleased with the offer. In fact it was higher than the price Matt even planned to list our house at, but thanks to the advice of our realtor, we listed it a few thousand dollars higher. And the buyers are the sweetest family. I know it shouldn't matter, but I really wanted a special family to buy our house, and this family is wonderful

The other great thing about the offer is they asked for a later closing date (due to a lease agreement). We were a little leery to wait so long to close, so we countered that we close in a timely manner, but we would pay them rent to stay in our home for another few weeks. That is one of the best decisions we made. It meant we had less pressure to find a home right away. It also meant that we could have a gradual move, without the stress of trying to close and (move) on two homes in one day or having to store all our stuff and live with my parents. Our realtor kept telling us that that never happens, and it relieved so much stress for us.

After we had a contract on our house, we were anxious to start house hunting. After all the stress and work of getting our house ready to sell, this part was supposed to be the fun part. We had a list of several important things we wanted in a new house, and we were pretty picky because this was going to be our forever home. We didn't want to make huge compromises in a house we planned to live in for 30 plus years. I did a lot of online searching, narrowed down to a few houses and we started showings. By the time we had looked at around five or six houses, we had made an offer on one (that eventually fell through) and came really close to making an offer on a different house. We were a bit frustrated but trusted that God had the perfect house prepared for us. I took one long day looking at seven or eight houses by myself with our realtor (my mom tagged along for most of the them too). I was getting really frustrated by the end of that day. We saw some great houses, but each of them seem to require a major compromise: not enough bedrooms, no dining area, not our preferred school district, tiny kitchen, too far from Matt's work... on and on. At the second to last home we looked at, I had come to terms that we would have to make some sacrifices because the "perfect" house we were looking for just didn't exist. I knew there would be some give and take, but it was hard to swallow what we'd have to give up when we were planning to live in this house forever.

Then we went to our very last showing.  We walked in and did a quick walk through to check it out, and I just knew it was "the one." It had EVERYTHING on our main list. I was shocked because it seemed so perfect after seeing nothing even close to it previously (at least that was in our price range). Even the house we made an offer on paled in comparison to this one. We brought Matt (and Barry) back that very night to see it, and Matt agreed it was the one. While technically in our price range, it was at the top end, and he was a bit leery about the price, but he agreed that we would never find anything more perfect for what we were looking for, so we made an offer. The house had been on the market for close to six months and was already vacant, so we had some leverage and put in a pretty low offer. After countering back and forth for a bit, we settled on what we thought was a really good deal and a price we were happy with. Ahh, the relief of finding it, and the excitement of dreaming about all the fun we would have in that house. We were thrilled.

A couple of weeks after we signed the contract, our lender called and told us the appraisal had come in below the purchase price. Stress snuck back in, but once again we trusted God that if this was His plan for us, it would work out. We never believed that we were overpaying for this home after all the houses I had seen in a similar price range. The problem with the appraisal seemed to lie in the comps. Since it's a slow time in the market, and our house is one of the bigger ones in the neighborhood, the appraiser couldn't find comps to bring up the value. It just seemed to be bad luck for the sellers. The next morning, our realtor called and informed us that the sellers agreed to lower the purchase price to the appraised value saving us another several thousand dollars off the purchase price. We had been a little worried that they would back out of the contract and not sell until the value increased, but instead we saved a significant amount of money. God was looking out for us.

After our initial negotiations and then lowering the price as a result of the appraisal, the house suddenly was no where near the top of our price range. That combined with a great interest rate and a down payment from the equity in our home means only a minor increase in our monthly mortgage payment. Since then, we have seen God bless us financially in other areas too including paying 1% less than the agreed amount of our buyer's closing costs because of a rule from their lender, and a tax credit/loan from the government (we bought a few months too early for the free home buyer tax credit) we expected to have to pay back in a lump sum on our 2013 taxes that we researched and discovered we won't have to repay. He continues to pour blessing upon blessing on our family. Those blessings should offset the costs of a few minor house projects and moving in expenses which should mean we can complete this entire process without dipping into much if any of our savings.

We are in awe of God's faithfulness throughout this entire process as we look forward to the blessing of this new "forever" home that will officially be ours in a few days. He deserves the glory, and we are praying that we will use this home to minister to and serve others and that it will be a blessing to many others outside our immediate family.