First things first… I am NOT pregnant. Sorry to disappoint any of you who were hoping for a black and yellow baby. ;)
The grand reveal is, this past summer, Charles and I became HOMEOWNERS.
Homeowners of a 2 bedroom/ 2 bath condo in a Northern Virginia community that dates back to the 1970’s and comes complete with a pool, tennis court annnnnd koi pond.
Hence the koi fish photo I used as the “update hint” in my last post – which at the time I shared it, we hadn’t yet closed or gotten the keys to our place and I didn’t feel comfortable sharing the news until I knew for sure, for sure the home was ours.
Let’s take it back to this past May when Charles and I were discussing if we should renew our apartment lease in August or find another apartment. One thing led to another and we (a.k.a. Charles) decided it was time to start shifting our perspectives from that of being renters to owners.
In response, I was like “Okay cool. Let’s take a first-time homebuyer class so we can learn about what goes into the home buying process and then prepare ourselves to buy next year.”
And then Charles was like “Nah, why next year? Why not this year?”
Me “Because while we do have money saved, we don’t have 20% down payment kind of money saved.”
Charles “Let’s just go take the class and see how we feel afterward.”
Soooooo come June, we took the first-time homebuyer class – a free course offered by the Virginia Housing Development Authority that went from 9am-3pm and broke down the homebuying process from beginning to end. It was alot of information to take in but, overall, helped us to realize that, as first-time homebuyers, we could qualify for (FHA) loans that only require 3% down as opposed to 20% = a huge difference.
However, despite these realizations, I was still attached to the timeline of buying next year so Charles and I went back in forth a couple times until he got me with the two following points:
1) Interest rates on the FHA loans are going to increase twice before this year is over.
annnd
2) While we technically live in Virginia, we’re right outside of D.C. and share the same cost of living (to put that in perspective – D.C. is ranked 6th right after NYC when it comes to the highest cost of living in the U.S.) and the housing market is shifting into a seller’s market. If we did’t buy now, we might be completely outpriced of the area by the time we (cough, cough, me, myself and I) “feel” we’re ready.
Sooooo after his “a dollar today is not a dollar tomorrow” spiel, I saw the light and hopped on Charles’s train for what would be a whirlwind of a summer homebuying adventure.
Our homebuying timeline went a little something like this:
[pipdig_left]
^^ With our realtor, Sam, on closing day. [/pipdig_left] [pipdig_right]
– 2 weeks after we took the first-time homebuyer’s class in mid-June, we started looking for a realtor. My friend, Lmya, recommended the agent she had worked with when she bought her home last year.
– A week later, we were scheduled to meet with Sam to see if we felt he was the right person to work with. 5 minutes into the intro meeting, we knew he was the one and, post experience, highly recommend him if you’re looking to buy in the DC/Northern Virginia area.
– At the initial meeting, we told him our budget and home requirements: 1) Two bedrooms 2) Ideally two baths but we could compromise with a one and a half bath situation 3) Good natural light, ideally south-facing 4) Dishwasher and laundry in unit 5) Balcony would be nice but optional if there are parks nearby (balcony optional because of that one time I was stuck on our balcony in the middle of a snowstorm).
– A day later, we applied for an FHA loan and were pre-approved.
– That following weekend, we were looking at homes Sam had found based on our list.
– Within 2 weeks, we saw a spot that was a bit of a fixer-upper but had met all of our requirements. An hour later, we decided to make an offer.
– 3 days later, after a bit of negotiating, the offer was accepted and we were officially under contract. [/pipdig_right]
At this point, it’s mid-July and we were now scheduled to close at the end of August. O_O
The next 45 days were spent submitting a slew of financial documents to our lender, reading line by line and signing papers upon papers of paper, double and triple checking our finances to confirm over and over again that we could afford the mortgage we were about to be stuck with for 30 years, getting an appraisal done and renegotiating the price of the condo down based on said appraisal, and figuring out what kind of reno work we wanted and could realistically afford before we moved in.
Soon it was time for us to do our home inspection which thankfully wasn’t too bad. The seller of the condo had owned it since the condo community was developed in 1970’s and had taken really good care of the place. The only urgent work that needed to be done was updating electrical throughout which the seller covered.
Before we knew it, we had received an email stating our mortgage was officially approved and a week later, we did our last walk through, signed a bunch of very legally binding documents and got the keys to our home.
^^ In front of our condo building.
And that’s the super summed up version our homebuying story. From thought to reality in less than 3 months which may seem really fast but the housing market in the DC/Virginia area is very transient with many homes being listed and then pulled off the market in a matter of hours.
We’re officially on week 3 of renovations with the plan to move in this weekend.
“Before” photos of our first black and yellow home that we own (omg still feels crazy to say that), coming your way next week. :)
xo, Setarra
12
