Sunday, October 14, 2012

Future Home Buyers PSA

Next week we hope to close on our house. This sentence is such a simple thing. It sounds so clean and easy. Like no trouble at all. But it's a ton of trouble. So much trouble. Tedious small details that needed to be dealt with "RIGHT NOW" kinds of trouble.

I'm sure that not everyone goes through this roller coaster of ups and downs when buying their first home. I'm sure that normal people who feel that they are ready to go house shopping actually have a decent amount of savings and a good credit score. I'm sure they are able to shop for homes that they can actually live in. But not all of us are so lucky. We were told 2 months into our offer on our short sale that our credit score had fallen 3 points (THREE POINTS!) and that we couldn't secure financing. We had to scramble to find another lender because apparently 3 points is enough to completely mess with your lending terms.  

It took us two years, three real estate agents, four lenders, and two (almost three but that's a whole other story) offers to get to this point. In the last few weeks we almost thought we wouldn't even get here. Keeping up on your finances when you don't earn much money is probably one of the hardest things to learn as an adult. Last week we must have made and taken at least 50 phone calls, e-mails, and performed various other paperwork tasks trying to make this happen. We've been told we don't have enough money. We've been told our credit score is too low. But we're going to make it work anyway.

It's obnoxious and tiring, but the end result is all that matters. This time next week, I'll hold the keys to our new house. Even 6 months ago I had a hard time imagining that we would even be trying to pack up and figure out when we could move with such extremely busy schedules. As stressful as all this has been, pausing to think back on everything we've been through to get here still gives me hope and a sense of accomplishment.