And, although I'm not feeling particularly inspired at the moment, there is some big stuff going on in the Ventura world lately which deserves a blog post (I think, at least).
We are in the middle of buying our first home!
It all started about 2 months ago while we were deciding whether or not to renew the lease at our current residence. We've talked about buying a home before we have kids, but what we pay for rent currently is keeping us from saving as much as we'd like.
So we started doing some research and looking into other places to rent for a lower price when someone mentioned to us the option of buying a home. We thought they were crazy but decided to consider it anyway. And as we reviewed our finances and options, we realized that it really wasn't a far-fetched idea.
One of our friends recently entered into the real estate world as an agent, and I meet with her regularly for coffee or lunch. At one of our regular meet-ups I mentioned the possibility of buying a home and asked her some questions. Soon after, we decided to start looking at some places and looking into the lending process.
The first lender we spoke with was a total jerk. We got the feel that he was impatient and didn't really want to help us with everything. Maybe it's because we didn't know what we were doing and had a lot of questions and uncertainties. But regardless, we knew he wasn't the one for us. Then we were referred to someone else who was the complete opposite and really helped us with all of our questions and hesitations and really laid out all of our lending options.
And then we got pre-approved to buy a home. BIG deal for us. And super exciting.
So we did. We found a house that we really loved and put an offer in, and it was accepted that night. Unbelievably fast!
All this happened within about a week-long time-frame. It was all kind of unexpected but definitely exciting.
But then we hit a BIG bump in the road with some of our lending approval. And that, my friends, was extremely stressful. We thought we'd hit THE roadblock that would end it all for us (for now, at least). Many of our friends and family were praying their hearts out for our situation. But, really, we expected the worst. We were prepared for it.
But God, in his mysterious and miraculous power, got our lending approved. I can't tell you how relieved we were or how excited that our dream of being home-owners wasn't squashed for now!
So this last Saturday we had the house inspected. This particular home was a flip that was done in the last year. It's an old home, and we anticipated problems related to that. But overall, we expected the inspection to go well because of the nature of a flip. I mean, why would you flip a house only for the next owners to have to do more flipping on it? Do you know what I mean?
Well....the inspection was pretty revealing. The inspector pretty much declared the house unsafe for living. What a disappointment for us, for sure. There are some major issues related to plumbing, electric, drainage, and the big deck around part of the house. All of which are big ticket financial items.
We haven't walked away from the house....yet. We're seeking the Lord's wisdom to know when/if we should walk away. But we have confidence that one way or the other God will work all of this home-buying stuff out for us.
So we covet your prayers in this situation for a couple of things:
- wisdom for the situation
- really good clarity to know when we should rescind (if we need to)
- reasonable-ness on behalf of the sellers - that they will be willing to fix the problems that need to be addressed
- patience - in the event that the sellers aren't cooperative
- and energy for dealing with the ups and downs and stress of home buying.
Hopefully we'll have an update for you in the near future, and our prayer is that it will include pictures of us in front of our new home!
Thanks so much for your prayers and all the advice that's been given!
- Kendall & Matthew -
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