The Not So Short Story.

For the past 8 months Adam and I had been on the road to home ownership. I refrained from sharing our “guess what?! we are looking for a house to buy!” news because so much of my life is public (whether it be via Instagram, or Facebook or this very blog), so it felt fun, exciting and even intentional for once to keep something for ourselves, something private; but also because I didn’t want to be asked a million and one times how it was going. Not because I don’t appreciate the genuine concern & excitement our loved ones and our community of friends might have for us, but rather I didn’t want to feel as though we were in a constant struggle against expectations or in a fishbowl of sorts. The pressure to perform and perform “well” when it came to picking our first home felt too immense. Homeownership as far as I could tell was never an EASY feat for anybody, but I knew we had chosen an especially difficult path in getting there and I wanted to be kind to ourselves and keep it on the DL. I didn’t know how to display our journey successfully and so publicly here without regret.

Four years earlier we had also seriously considered purchasing a home in Seattle and at the time I was still in full-time employment as an RN. Duel full-time incomes made our dreams of homeownership all the more likely and it felt like a comfortable and confident next step at that time. We had been pre-approved for an amount that far exceeded our wildest expectations and we were excited about the possibility of actually getting into a home within the Seattle city boundaries. Seattle is an expensive place to live – the costs of renting in this city are 61% higher than the national average, and owning just seemed nearly impossible. Practically every person we knew at the time was either renting or underwater on their own property. It never crossed our minds that we could actually afford something in the ’206′ area code, so we considered ourselves destined to be serial renters, and were okay with that for a really really long time. Even in the weeks just before our house closed we constantly had conversations about how “okay” we were with being forever renters as long as we got to stay near the city and our lifestyle remained much of the same – we could travel, and enjoy nights out with friends – we did not want to become what so many had referred to as “house poor”. We were reminded often that unless we expanded our desired neighborhoods to miles & miles far outside of Seattle, OR I always kept full-time work (hello, when would we ever start a family?), OR we saved and saved for the next 20 years, homeownership probably wasn’t gonna happen for us anytime soon if we remained Seattleites.

Luckily for both Adam and myself we have always been on the same page when it came to buying our first home. We didn’t want a condo, or a townhome, but a house. A single-family dwelling, with a yard and a simple way for our elderly bulldog to get in and outside. We weren’t opposed to renting either an apartment or townhome, but if we were going to make an investment of our own we only wanted it to be in the form of a house…that’s just us. We also dug our feet in the sand with regards to location and were NOT budging. We had many a conversation with close friends puzzled by the contradiction of us wanting a home so badly, but our unwillingness to move outside the Seattle city limits to get one. Even with Adam working on the Eastside (if you’re not familiar with Seattle, it’s across the waters of Lake Washington, about a thirty-minute drive on a good traffic day (an hour on a bad one) from our current location) we’ve always stood firm in our decision to stay in the heart of the city. For many reasons really, but mostly because we felt that if we were willing to live in the suburban outskirts of Seattle then it was time to return home to our suburban roots in Colorado and be near family. We moved to Seattle because we loved that it was the perfect combination of city hustle quiet suburban calm all at once. We love the easy access to weekend farmers markets, the plethora of amazing food options, the short walking distances to the grocery store…the list goes on and on. Seattle just felt like the perfect “home” for us. If we were going to leave THIS city, we were going to leave Washington and that was that.

So when we made the decision last June to start really seriously looking, we weren’t naive enough to think it would be a simple process. We knew that finding a house in our very limited geographical radius would be nearly, if not ACTUALLY impossible, especially in our new price range (self-employment is no joke, and the bank practically considered me non-existent (talk about identity crisis!) when it came to what we were “qualified” for). We had been renting a great house month-to-month for the past four years, so we knew we had time on our side to slowly look and check out our options – however small those options might end up being. We had saved what we could for a down payment and went into the initial search optimistically and hopeful. Not two days after our concrete decision to seek homeownership, did our landlord call and say she was selling her home. We had 30 days to buy or find a new rental (talk about PRESSURE!!), and ultimately decided that a rash and frantic home purchase would never be the right way to go. So I spent two solid weeks standing in line outside rental properties desperately trying to find a short-term rental option that allowed a dog and would also allow us to calmly continue our house search. Without much luck, we signed another year lease, presuming that with our smaller budget our likelihood of finding the right home in the next year was slim to none anyways.

We had never considered what a short sale or foreclosure option might look like before we began the home search, and were warned many a time during the search that going the short sale route would be exhausting, torturous and more than likely not even successful. A few of our married couple friends had attempted putting in offers on short sale properties during their own home buying process, before eventually giving up and waiting for a traditional home buying option to come along. But try as we might, we realized very early on, that our budget just didn’t allow for much more than a 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom dump in the traditional sense. And I’m not just saying “dump” in that dramatic, I want the “oh-so-perfect-first-house” way, but seriously : D-U-M-P. Four walls, stained smelly carpet, outdated everything and creepy as hell. And because neither Adam or myself are innately handy, a true fixer upper just wasn’t in our cards financially OR emotionally. The entire reason we wanted a home in the first place was so that I could intentionally feel more grounded in Seattle (less travel, more home time), start a family eventually, have an immediate and comfortable home office/good lighting space (or most recent rental had been a dark, dreary dungeon-like space when it came to good light), and I could continue on my current career path without the pressure to go back to my “old life”. The thought of buying a home that needed a ton of work or was smaller than our current rental options seemed frivolous.

Ironically very very early on in our search, I stumbled upon a home I had open house stalked over three years prior, which was seemingly back on the market. I remember during that initial walk-through so many years ago, falling in love with the character and charm of the 1920′s bungalow and thinking quite vividly in my head that a house of this kind was a far off illusion for us – at that time it was listed well outside of our price range. But this time around, something in my gut was telling me to ask our agent to find out more about the house – THAT house. After a little research we found out the house was vacant and had been on the market for sometime. There was currently a “lowball” offer already on the table from an investment company, but we still had a chance to put in an offer although we would be ‘second in line’. We learned that it can take weeks, even months for the bank to even look at short sale offers and they don’t even have to respond! That meant we could wait up to a full year before knowing whether or not we even had a chance at the house and couldn’t put an offer in on another property in the short-term. After viewing the house a couple more times and considering the right amount to offer, we went ahead and put in our initial offer. I left for a four-week work trip to Europe the next day.

The summer went by and turned into fall and then into winter and not much had changed. No word from the bank, we had practically forgotten we had even put in an offer on a house. And then things started happening…FAST. The bank had turned down that other low investment offer, but in the mean time another couple had also put an offer in on the house and it was larger than ours…MUCH larger. At that point we bid the house farewell and I emotionally bashed the place for the next two weeks, listing out all the things I didn’t REALLY like about it in order to make myself feel better. We hadn’t gotten our hopes up about the house (we’d been warned too many times by our agent not to), but we were still disappointed. Sad that the search had to continue once again and that the possibilities for homeownership seemed all the more slim at that point. Let’s just say the market within our price range was : dry as a bone.

Two weeks later, and we got word that the other couple had backed out. Today I wonder why they REALLY backed out, but we were told by the sellers agent it was because they didn’t want to deal with the lengthy short sale process and wanted a home immediately. In a flash we were back in the running and the bank wanted to counter us. Woah…it was really happening. The bank countered us nearly 60k over our original offer and 45k over asking price – we couldn’t help but laugh out loud and ask “really??!” How could they counter us at a price so far beyond what the house had even been listed before!? We learned that in a short sale situation, the bank doesn’t necessarily pre-approve the listed price of a house on short sale, but rather the home owner and their agent set a price that they are hopeful to get and one they hope the bank will eventually approve. Once again we felt defeated and so far off the mark. After a conversation with our lender (who offered to increase our loan amount to match the bank’s request) and our short sale attorney (oh yeah, forgot to mention that : even though I’m married to an attorney, you have to hire a special lawyer to help you through the short sale process…something to consider for those of you out there thinking about pursuing this kind of property) we decided to stay within an amount that was comfortable for us, not one the bank had intentionally skyrocketed. We followed the suggestion of the attorney and increased our offer to match the current asking price $1000 more. And like that, it was accepted. Woah.

From then until closing it was a lot of ups and downs. Learning that the home owners had multiple leans against the home and a few we would be responsible for didn’t feel good. It also wasn’t fun to pay off the overdue utility bill, or fix a couple of things on the house at our own expense in order for it to pass appraisal. But nonetheless we kept pushing forward. From putting in a stove conveniently given to us by one of Adam’s nice co-workers who was working on a home remodel of his own (thank you Greg!), to the multitude of inspectors (the one suggested by our agent, a mold specialist, the oil company, a sewer specialist and so on and so forth) I wondered when it would ever end. And then one day it did. We signed and had keys in our hands and it was ours. Now this last paragraph although short and sweet doesn’t even come close to accounting for or reflecting the amount of sleepless nights I had the last two weeks leading up to closing. I was taunted with horrific nightmares from every imaginable thing (squatters living in the basement, to our oil heating tank leaking all over the property and into others yards costing us thousands). I stayed up night after night doing hours of research on the various quirky aspects of the nearly 100-year-old home – all the while freaking myself out and making me question over and over again whether this was the right decision for us. The more I read into the property and the more I poured over our seemingly “great” inspection report, the more my gut was telling me that this decision was the wrong one. But for many reasons I’m just now realizing and accepting, I didn’t listen to my gut but rather followed my heart. The heart that wanted a place to call our own, the heart that wanted to start a family and tell the world that we were okay. The heart that wanted to fit in with our other married friends who owned homes. And as I look back on it now, I’m disappointed and most upset with myself. For allowing my need for societal acceptance (I realize how much of this is actually all internal pressures), and my desire to have four walls to call my own outweigh the red flags that were going off in my head.

So when all was said and done, nearly seven months after our initial offer, we closed on a short sale home and we were thrilled – really we were. A 1924 3 bedroom, 1.5 bathroom craftsman bungalow was ours. We finally were going to have a place of our own – and a cute one at that in our ideal neighborhood too! What had seemed scary and exciting all at once now felt even more so with the reality of “woah. We just bought a house!” shocking us to our core. We spent that first afternoon walking through the home, eagerly dreaming up all the endless decor possibilities. We anticipated moving in our belongings that following weekend and set initial goals for cosmetic changes we wanted to make to the house before and after move in. We called our families and made plans for first visits and our anticipated need for help with initial home improvements.

No more than one hour later we met the first set of neighbors. And as kind and friendly as they were (they were clearly thrilled that the house that had sat vacant was now occupied) they shared news with us that made our hearts instantly sink. Things unraveled for us in a blink. We found out the house had actually been vacant and on the market for many, many years (3 ) and in the midst of its vacancy the home had been broken into more than a few times. There were a few suspicious aspects of the home that although I noticed on inspection, I didn’t fully comprehend until we spoke with the neighbors (electrical wires that poked out in weird places, missing smoke alarms, unidentified marks on the basement walls)…the house had been damaged by squatters (remember those nightmares I was having the two weeks prior to closing?!) and as a result we learned that the house was unsafe to reside in more ways than one. All of the copper grounding materials had been stripped from the house, those weird marks on the basement wall that we were told were mold by our inspector we came to realize were actually burn marks from fires being started in the basement. We also noticed that there was constant sparking of our light switches (seriously no joke, actual sparks!) and knew immediately on that first day, that moving into our new home that weekend just wasn’t going to happen.

That was five long weeks ago. Since then, we’ve had over 20 ‘contractors’ in and out of the house (9 of whom were electricians all telling us that they were flabbergasted by how unsafe the conditions of the electrical work really were – NONE of which was disclosed to us by our inspector). We agreed to a full overhaul of all of our electrical wiring, an expense that we never could have expected on day one. Electrical re-wiring meant walls to come down, original molding to be ripped out, carpet to be ruined, and original plaster ceilings destroyed by the pressure of our electrician walking on them in the attic. Also after finding evidence of some not so great activities that went on in the house before our purchase (trust me when I say raking up used heroin needles and crack pipes in the backyard on day one of owning a home is not the most ideal way of taking over ownership) I decided to get the interiors of the house tested for drug residue. I just had this gut turning suspicion that our new house was some kind of horrible example of an episode of Breaking Bad. Sure enough – meth residue in our venting system and throughout the home. Fantastic (please insert heavy sarcasm here)! A few thousand dollar HVAC cleanup & two full weeks of elbow grease hopefully rid us of the problem (we should have final results from a re-test this Wednesday), but we have felt all sorts of “violated” ever since finding out that lovely news.

Lucky for us, the house wasn’t actually a “meth manufacturing” property (thank the high heavens!), but spending money to clean up remnants of things you’d rather not think about, makes this whole thing all the more frustrating and exhausting. We have since completely overhauled the yard (thank gosh for friends who give great referrals!) ripping out dead trees, pruning 25 feet tall shrubs, removing some weird water pond in the back yard, and slowly clearing out dead leaves and overgrowth. We are considering having the plumbing completely redone this week as well since the downstairs ceiling has been removed for the electrical work, have decided to fully gut the basement and rebuild it to start fresh, and are also working on remodeling our kitchen (something I NEVER thought I could get Adam to agree to do this early on). SO many repairs that we thought we could wait on, have quickly taken over our day-to-day and hour by hour decisions. We will have to save for things like a full roof and sewer repair (also two items that were misdiagnosed on inspection), a leak fix of the foundation (that was a new find after heavy rains last week – yipee!), a new front porch and cement walkway, exterior house painting, and new fencing. We knew going into this purchase that buying a house of this age, would come with a whole slew of problems, but this many fixes before we’ve even slept a night in the house has led to many hours of tears and frustration.

So after what could quite possibly be the LONGEST “not so short sale” story to home ownership, I woke up this morning understanding why my blog had been pushed to the back burner and has been quiet for so long. We’ve quite simply been overwhelmed by life and the thought of sharing those overwhelming feelings, felt all the more overwhelming. We have been ‘couch surfing’ for the past four weeks, leaning heavily on the generosity of friends, and all of our belongings are currently in storage. I have turned into a general contractor of sorts as I let workmen in and out of our new house all day long in the hopes that one of these days it will be livable and ready for us to make it a home. My Mom was in town all last week (hallelujah!) and was a saving grace – she was able to give us an optimistic perspective on how we can move forward and helped in brainstorming fixes we’d never had experience with before. Dealing with home repairs is usually stressful, but when it comes in the heaviest form five minutes after you get the keys to a home its life changing. Regret is an awful word, and if you’d asked me three, even two weeks ago if I regretted purchasing this house I would have said yes. But regret is a consequence of knowledge and then action, and our actions were simply a consequence of following the seemingly trustworthy information we had been given during inspection. I’m sure as days turn into months, and months into years, we will gain a whole magnitude of perspective on this experience and it will eventually feel like only a tiny fragment of our past. Even just a few weeks later, I’m excited about the possibilities this home holds for us, regardless of the tough start.

I have always tried to be transparent here (sometimes I have not been as articulate as I’d hoped) sharing my dreams, goals, creative pursuits, fears and current life happenings. But for the last few months, those life happenings have felt like a terrifying roller coaster of sorts – elated in one moment, stomach in throat terrified the next. I struggled in knowing how to share, or why to share, or when to share. Ultimately it all cascaded down into not sharing at all. It’s amazing what happens to you when one arena of your life is predominantly out of whack. When one of your most basic needs (shelter) is one big question mark. Health, relationships, work, and creative energies all seem to go right out the window and everything you are and everything that exists about you has to focus on that one thing. At least that’s the way this journey had ended up for me. We (myself especially) have been emotionally tormented by the overpowering predicament of the moment. They say buying a home is one of those major life stressors (it falls in line with marriage or parenthood or graduation) and boy did it rock our world. I mean ROCK it all topsy-turvy like. We are taking things one day at a time at this point, and are hoping with all our might that we will be moving into the house sometime in early to mid March. I hope as things positively progress with the house, I can come back here and be more present with all of you. I appreciate everyone’s patience as I took time away from this blog to focus on life. I’ve been fearful that my absence was somehow reflective of a complete life derailment since blogging typically brings such great joy to my life, but realized that something simply had to give during this unexpected and challenging time. Looking forward to sharing the progression of our new home with all of you and the things we learn along the way.

**Side note : yes, those are Uggs you see me wearing in that first photo with our new home in the background. As unflattering as I consider those darn boots to be, they have been the most comfortable thing to quickly throw on during this long and drawn out move, especially when the weather has been so ugly. Does anybody else still have those things floating around in their closets?! Ha!