Maybe rather than saying I don't have a home, it's better to say that I have several. But whatever the case, Winston-Salem is as much my home as anywhere else I've lived.
And the house we were renting was as homey as I'd felt in a long time. I was going to be sad to leave it when we moved away. It had its issues, and I had a nice long list of things I wanted in a new house if possible. But when we found out we were staying in Winston-Salem for residency, we pretty much just decided to settle in a little more where we were.
Then we found out about the nice physician's mortgage one of the local banks offer. Super low rates, no down payment, and no mortgage insurance. We realized we could get a pretty good-sized loan and pay quite a bit less per month than what we'd been paying in rent.
Still, we liked where we were. We explored several neighborhoods with nice, big houses for sale in our price range. We agreed pretty quickly that, even though the houses were bigger and newer, we LOVED living in our current neighborhood, Ardmore. It's SUPER close to everything, including the hospital. We're within 2 miles of great shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, and the gym. It's got lots of sidewalks and connecting roads for running. The homes are old, but (usually) charming. And the side of the neighborhood we live on is relatively safe compared to other areas of town.
Of course, updated older homes in a resident's price range are pretty few and far between. Especially ones with same-level laundry, a working fireplace, lots of closet space, and a deck. Those were my requirements.
SO we agreed to look online and just see if anything looked like something we might be interested in. And if not, we'd just stay where we were. We didn't think we'd actually find what we were looking for, but we wanted to at least be able to say we looked.
I searched the MLS website daily. I found lots of things I loved, but they were all WAY over our budget. And everything in our budget was NOT up to par. I was being picky. Extremely picky.
Finally I saw two houses that interested me. They were the only two we looked at. And one of them had everything on my list. A pretty new kitchen. A huge walk-in closet. A laundry room. A deck. A fireplace that worked. It had a few things I wish were different -- only 1 1/2 baths instead of 2, and an upstairs whose ceilings are lower than normal. But, overall, it was by FAR the best things we'd found for the price.
After talking with a mortgage lender and looking at amortization charts (Now I'm the nerd. So fun!), we found out it would be about $200 less per month than what we had been paying in rent, and, after 3 years, we should have about $10,000 in equity. So even if we were to sell at $5-7K less than what we bought it for, including realtor fees, we should still come out a little ahead. And we would get to live in a house that had everything we'd been looking for.
So on my birthday, April 10, we spent the whole day debating about whether or not this was the right choice. It wasn't the most exciting birthday ever, since I spent the whole day distracted. BUT, by that afternoon, we'd called our realtor to put in an offer!
It took a couple of days of offers and counter offers and signing documents via our iPhones. But by Friday, April 12, we finally reached an agreement. While we were traveling down to Charleston for our vacation, we signed all of our documents electronically and bought a house. Happy birthday to me!
We spent a lot of the next month doing inspections and going back and the forth with the sellers about them fixing a few minor problems (electrical outlets and such). It was weird to kind of have a house, but not really. More than a month later, on May 23, we finally closed. Then, keys in hand, we took off to Arkansas. :-)
Since coming back, we've finally got moved in, and we're slowly getting settled. We've updated Samuel's room with new paint, a new closet door handle and a new light fixture (for which we had to call an electrician because someone seriously ghetto-rigged the previous one). I've just about finished converting our weird back room into a mud room (and it's super cute! Can't wait to show off the finished product)! We've gotten a new dining set, ordered patio furniture that's coming Thursday, and we're getting a security system installed Thursday too. We've bought a new lawnmower and desk for Eric. And we're having the exterior painted soon too.
It's a work in progress, but it's coming along!
It's so funny to me that we really had no intentions of getting a place, yet here we are. I feel beyond blessed that God worked it out so that we could get a place we loved. I hope we continue to love it... because we're here for a while! :-)
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