Comments on: Three Years Ago: A House Hunting History

By: YoungHouseLove

YoungHouseLove — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 05:08:49 +0000

Aw, that’s sweet! Congrats and have fun!

xo,
s

By: Chana

Chana — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 23:43:21 +0000

Hey! I’ve been reading your blog for a few months and happened to go back into the archives where I found this. I just wanted to say that I find it very interesting that you moved into your first house on May 25th – this May 25th, my fiance and I will be getting married. Thought that was kinda funny… Also, I know two seconds after sending this, I will feel super lame for thinking this was cool… *sigh. Oh well, here goes.

By: Pattie

Pattie — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:15:37 +0000

What a great story…makes me feel so good inside :) My husband and I had a similar experience. We bought ours before we were even engaged. We were looking at condos (I still regret that we can’t do anything to the outside of the home without approval…and have no yard.) so we went to several homes over the course of the weekend and found some really nice ones in our price range! But there was one, even after we left, that we just couldn’t get out of our minds. It was DEFINITELY a fixer upper, but as we walked through it for the first time we imagined all the things we could do to it. It was hideous to say the least…dirty with outdated, broken everything and trampled, mismatched flooring…but we could see through all the mess and as we looked at other homes we began comparing them to this one. That’s when we knew that it was the one. Three years later it looks SO much better, and we’ve nearly outgrown it, but I really hope that our next home gives us that same feeling upon walking in (that feeling of “ah…this house and I belong together.” :)

By: Jeff Goins

Jeff Goins — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 16:48:36 +0000

We just bought a house and it’s a similar story!

By: Kim

Kim — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 17:10:51 +0000

I literally almost just started crying reading this on my lunchbreak at work. I probably would have if I wasn’t at work right now.

I can only hope our house hunt goes just as well. When it eventually starts happening :)

By: Katie

Katie — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 16:06:57 +0000

I loved reading this post! Glad I am not the only one who bought a house in a whirlwind.. My boyfriend and I ended up buying the first house we looked at. We looked at 4 the 1st day of hunting, when, like you, we were only “looking” not “buying”.. but I fell in love. Thanks for posting!

By: Aron

Aron — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 03:43:00 +0000

Great story. Mine is much like yours. My boyfriend was encouraging me to buy a house. Right market etc. I of course was nervous. He assured me that he would help to fixit up. I was just “looking”. My realator kept showing me “move in ready” homes and I was bored to tears. The minute I saw the 1920 built quaint bungalow fixer upper in the best part of historic downtown I was sold. Sky blue shag carpet and all. I put in an offer the next morning and it was accepted. I got my keys on May 18th of last year and have been in non stop restore/renovation mode ever since :)

By: Chrissy

Chrissy — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 17:56:28 +0000

We’ve been looking for 7 weeks and counting :( I’m so jealous of your experience. I HATE house hunting and it’s getting very depressing. It seems that everything in our price range is either good house/bad area; bad house/good area. After finding your blog and seeing some of your transformations, I’m begininng to see that maybe a “bad house” wouldn’t be so bad at all!

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:35:25 +0000

Wow, we actually had a very similar experience. We actually started ‘looking’ at houses online and just driving by probably 2 years before, just mainly dreaming about our future house, and getting a feel for what we’d be able to afford at some point. Fast forward to the end of our engagement, while we were super busy planning for a wedding, and kept having these ‘should we look for a house?’ thoughts. We decided to wait until after the wedding, see what kind of $$ we had left over, and go from there. The night of our rehearsal dinner, my in-laws gave us the good news that we had inherited a small sum of $$ from his late PawPaw, and combined with a gift from his grandma, we realized we would be able to put a nice down payment in on our first house MUCH sooner than we had imagined!! We were both in tears at that moment! So, we get married, go to Jamaica for our honeymoon, and the day after we got back, went to the bank to get pre-approved. We connected w/ a realtor, went looking that weekend, saw about 20 homes on Saturday… We were tired and ready to go home to think about all those houses, when our realtor suggested a new construction neighborhood, which we had assumed we couldn’t afford. It was a little outside of town, and we had both thought that we wouldn’t like driving the extra 5-8 mins out. Well, we get out there, and were completely blown away at what our dollars could buy ‘outside’ city limits…we’re talking granite countertops, hardwoods, huge 18in upgraded tile, enormous cabinets, even an extended living and master! The house we looked at was in construction, set to be their next spec. We went home, mulled it over, and the next day went back to sign our names on the line. So, I totally understand that trying to explain it to friends/family without sounding absolutely crazy. But sometimes I guess it just works out that way! We LOOOOVE our house, and we’re so happy we decided to buy it. Even if we are “outside of town.” :)

By: Jenny

Jenny — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 23:09:15 +0000

Ok, super long story short- living in california, pondering moving to oregon (boyfriend is from there.) See a major fixer upper. I say “shut up, no way.” We’re talking built in 1890, with sloping floors and warped windows. Months go by. We decide to really move to oregon. The house is still for sale. Find out we can get a rehab loan that will roll the major work into the mortgage (i.e. fixng the sloped floors….turns out the sloped because someone cut the middle out of ALL THE SUPPORT BEAMS when the heating ducts were added.) We go into escrow in February of last year, with countrywide. Countrywide goes out of business and Bank of America takes over. The escrow was supposed to be 90 days and it closed on day 183, I kid you not. It was a nightmare. Every time we were supposed to close, the bank would call and want more documents. We had to have a contractor come out to estimate how much it would be to paint some new drywall in a small laundry closet. They said we couldn’t say we would do it ourselves because we might become injured. (SERIOUSLY?!) There were like fixty other stupid things like that, and then escrow finally closed the day before we were moving from Southern California. We didn’t have hot water for a month, and we didn’t have a kitchen for 7 months. I cooked with a microwave, crockpot, and plug in skillet in an upstairs bedroom. We’ve lived here a year now and totally love it, the house is awesome and totally worth it now….but man, I was skeptical at first!!