Hi all! Sorry it’s been so quiet on the blogging front lately, but the silence has been for a good reason – we bought a new house! If you know the two of us you know how much we love to talk, so keeping this big of a secret for the last few months has been tough. We will get the keys Wednesday and then we own our forever home! We always knew the condo was just a starter home for us but we made it work for more than 7 years. We weren’t seriously looking for a house since I’ve been playing full-time student/house husband/interior design intern. We figured it would be another 2-5 years before we were in the right financial position. But I guess you never know when things will come together.
I don’t know if any of you do this, but I review my daily Redfin or Zillow updates just after my alarm goes off while still in bed. Sean calls it House Porn. I love doing this so I can imagine the design possibilities for all those houses while assuring myself I’m not missing out on a big opportunity. One morning this last Spring I spotted the house we just bought. It said it had been “completely remodeled” but suspiciously only had one photo of the front of the house. Sure, that photo made it look beyond charming, but it set off alarms in my head that said “RUN!” That’s how realtors try to trick you into seeing an awful house. I was so turned off that I wasn’t able cyber-stalk the house that it wasn’t until August that we finally got the courage to schedule an appointment with our agent. We ran the numbers and figured that if we sold our condo, instead of turning it into a rental property like we had always planned, we might be able to swing buying a house now.
For those of you familiar with the LA housing market – I wish you Godspeed. For those of you who aren’t – you’d be hard pressed to find a house in a good neighborhood and good condition for $500,000. And any house worth buying is going to sell in just a few days. Add to that buyers offering tons of cash (or all cash!) and that leaves regular buyers like us out of luck.
The house we just closed on took a lot of negotiating. In fact, the only reason it hadn’t been sold yet was a combination of an awful selling agent and the house not showing well. When we first saw it there was a ton of work still being done to it. Forget that part where they claimed is had already been remodeled – they were still finishing work! It was plenty to scare off potential buyers. But we’ve remodeled our condo kitchen and almost all of the cabin so we weren’t deterred by a little elbow grease if we needed to finish some projects. I’d like to think we caught the seller at their point of desperation. The bad news for us was that we needed a lot more money than we expected to buy the house and keep the mortgage affordable while I’m still in school full-time. So much so, that we chose to sell our cabin, Naughty Pines, in order to make our next dream come true. I’ll let that sink in for a minute.
While we were both sad when we first considered selling the cabin, we’ve come to terms with it now. None of this was an easy decision but we are over the moon about the adventures this new home has in store for us. The seller completed the remodel before closing but you know I’m so excited to share with all of you how we will make this home ours. Stick around because there’s so much to share about this new home we’ve aptly named The Crhacienda!
