Oh yes we did.
Since we knew we wanted to move back to Minnesota, I'd been looking, looking, looking at homes in the Twin Cities. Not always the easiest thing to do when your only option is searching online-but hey, it beats whatever people did pre-internet (I...don't even know. The horror!).
It's amazing how the more bedrooms you add to a house, the more the price increases. Oh, so you want a fourth bedroom, huh? Add thirty grand to the price, suckers! The pickings were fairly dismal for our budget and the size house we needed, with our growing family. And for me being a somewhat picky interior designer. Then of course there's all the beautifully staged photos that show perfectly online, but in person? You're not even sure it's the same house. There were beautiful new houses in crappy locations, crappy houses in beautiful locations, houses missing fairly essential things like doors (?!?), strange smells, chewed-up and scratched wood work...
There was one I kept coming back to. It was at the high end of our budget, but...it looked...so nice. My mom went on some preliminary showings with our real estate agent, and after several disappointments, she called to say that I was going to really like this one. I already knew that. I went to check it and a few other properties out the following weekend. The other showings were just a cover, though.
It was the one. I could picture living there, raising a family there. The neighborhood was new, beautiful, friendly. There's a playground right down the street. I'm pretty decisive-I knew what I wanted to major in since I was in eighth grade, what college I wanted to go to since I was a sophomore in high school, and that Tyson and I were going to get married after a month or two of knowing each other. This house was just the latest in Major Life Decisions That Shannon Decided On After Approximately 3.908 Seconds.
Not only did this house have everything we were looking for (right number of bedrooms, bathrooms, decent yard, etc.), it had things I never would have dreamed it would have been at this price point. Cherry cabinetry, cherry trim throughout, quartz-not just quartz but Cambria quartz countertops. Really, the biggest thing I need (want) to do to the place is paint the bedrooms. Wallpaper a couple of walls. That's it. Like I said, it's at the high end of our budget, but not having to do any work to it? A basically move-in ready home, only a few years old? As opposed to having to take all the money we would have "saved" and putting it into necessary updates (like doors?)? Sold.
It was a close call. Tyson was waiting on a job offer, so we couldn't put an offer of our own on the house until he officially had the job. The day he was supposed to get the job offer, our realtor called to let me know that they had received another offer on the house, but they would be willing to wait until that night for us to get our offer in. Tyson accepted a job that evening, we put together our offer (e-signing papers at 10:00 that night), they reviewed both offers the next morning, and...chose us. I wrote a letter to the current owners (also drafted at about 10:00 that night), and our realtor said that was a big reason they chose us.
That...was a busy weekend. And a really strange one.
Tyson still hasn't seen the house in person yet. And won't, until we close in just over five weeks. Luckily he cares more about who will be our internet service provider than what the house actually looks like, so I think we'll be just fine.