Okay, I think it’s as official as it’s going to get, at least for the next month or so and that means I finally feel comfortable officially announcing it. Ellie and I bought a house.

We’ve been looking for a while now, for what feels like somewhere between four and six months. We came into the market towards the end of the season and looked through everything available for us. It’s just been a waiting game for new things to come on the market since. The house we ended up buying, however, had been on the market over 40 days before we took a look at it. We both had written it off for some reason or another, I think for me it was because it looked too far away from downtown where I work. We went to see it for an open house on a whim. The photos we saw online made it look kind of dumpy, but since we were getting bored not having anything to see we squeezed it in.

And oh my god. It blew my mind at how horribly it was photographed. With every room we saw, my mouth dropped a bit further. Sure, it wasn’t perfect when we saw it but it had so, so much potential to be a great starter house for us.

We talked to the host of the open house and he said he just had an offer on the house, so if we were interested then we should get ours in quick. To me, that sounded a little too much like a coincidence but it later proved to be true. Ellie and I went home and thought it over, not thoroughly but we thought it over and ultimately decided to put in our offer. We put down a price we deemed to be fair.

It took a few days, along with a counter offer, but we eventually got an accepted offer. I was immediately ecstatic. It felt like I had won the lottery. Ellie, ever my source of good judgement, was more cautiously excited. She wanted to see the inspection and make sure everything was sound and ready for us to move into. So we did, also because our agent made sure we did. The house, for the most part, is solid. It has good bones. It also has a few sore spots. Like the roof and the furnace and the garage. They all need replacement. So we negotiated some more, I followed suit with Ellie, though she needed to convince me because I only had eyes for the house. She got us a good deal on a house that will serve us well and be a source of learning about owning a home.

There also was a worry, like we had a year ago when we moved, about being able to find a subletter so we’re not paying double rent. Apparently our current apartment is more desirable than our last. I haven’t been able to keep up with the number of people trying to get a showing. And we managed to find two people interested enough to put in an application. So we’re in good shape.

We’ll be closing March 10, and then slowly moving in over the next three weeks. We’ll also be doing some painting and minimal repairs while our stuff isn’t in the house. It’s going to be a busy year! I’ll probably blog about, and I know Ellie will blog about it too!