We have been living in a 1 bedroom apartment in South Orange County for the past 3 years. We received notification in August from Management that after our lease is up in November we could extend it a whopping 5 months for *only* $200 more a month. At that point, we decided that it was probably time for us to move on to someplace else...someplace more permanent.
We went through our lists of musts: Must have at least 2 bedrooms, preferably 3 bedrooms. Must have a yard of some sort. Must be in a nice and safe area near good schools. Must be within reasonable distance from my work. Must have a completely separate 2nd unit for his Mom.
The first thing we did was make sure our finances were in order. Check Plus. Then we went to a Bank to get pre-approved for a loan. (Big Mistake #1) Then we started looking at houses online and trying to figure out where we wanted to live. We thought for sure we could do this on our own. (Big Mistake #2) Then we put in our 60 day notice to our Property Managers, making November 26 our move out date. (Big Mistake #3)
After a month and a half of conference calls, meetings, emails, we still were no where with getting pre-approved for a loan with the Bank. We had started the house search because we were stupidly waiting for this Bank to tell us the magic numbers for us to start our search. By the end of September we did not look at a single house or had any plans for where we were going to live next.
I started freaking the F out.
That's when we started working with our Realtor. She had been recommended to us by my BFF and we hit the ground running. We searched online for several homes and duplexes all over Orange County. We started the pre-approval process with a Mortgage Broker she recommended. On Saturday, October 18 we looked at 6 houses. After seeing some crappy ones, and some amazing ones, the last house we felt was THE ONE. It was totally over our budget but by the following Wednesday it price had reduced enough for us to feel comfortable with the offer we were putting in. Our Realtor was very optimistic about us getting the home. We patiently waited...and waited...FIVE days later we find out that the seller had gone with another offer. There was no time to be sad, no time to be upset, it was Mid October and we still didn't know where we were going to live. The following Tuesday we decided to do another round of house searching. This time we looked at 5 houses. This time THE ONE was the first house we looked at.
On October 29, we put an offer in on a 3 bedroom/2 bath house with a detached garage and hobby rooms. Escrow opened on the October 31, and is projected to close on December 1.
We are beyond excited to close and get moving into our own house.
