So the wedding came and went.  It seems just like yesterday that we were walking down the isle.  But it’s not July.  It’s not even 2008.  It’s a new year and with a new year comes a new home for me and Priscilla.  After talking to some friends that had recently entered the world of home ownership we came across a guy named David Willard.  My good friend John and Dennis both used David as their real estate agent so I thought I would meet him and start the process once again.

David is a tall and dark guy that, though not necessarily his main neighborhood, has sold homes in the Smyrna area.  We decided he was our best choice to help continue our search.  He hooked us up with his brother who just happens to be in the Mortgage business.  James Willard, though I have never met him in person, seemed to be the ideal choice for our mortgage needs.  He got us quickly preapproved and we  were on our way.

David hooked us up with a similar online house portfolio that updated daily with new homes that are in the area we want and has what we want.  We were sticking with the 3 bedroom two bath range in Smyrna.  I wanted a basement.  Priscilla wanted anything new.  We both had the perfect house in our head.  It was just a matter of  finding it.

 The first day we went out to view some homes, we only went to see three.  The one with the basement was too old.  Go figure.  The more I looked the more I found that new houses are either expensive, or far away.  We needed to start looking for compromises.  Priscilla was dead set on a “non-fixer upper”  She wanted it “move in” ready.  I was willing to change some wallpaper and paint some walls if we had to.  So I started making a new list of houses to go visit.  This time I found about 8 houses to see.  This time they were mostly in the 2000 or newer range and still were safe in our price range.  They all had some plus’ and minus’ but none of them really made a splash.  

That was until I found a house one Montclair Circle in Smyrna.  I immediately showed Priscilla via email and she too thought it was a good one.  She made sure I knew that it didn’t mean a whole lot until we see the house in person.  It was hard for me not to get excited.  “This could be it.”, I thought.  I tried hard to not get my hopes up.  We made our way to see the houses I found and after a full day of viewing all the houses the home on Montclair was still the only one we favored.

After that long day I knew we needed to act fast.  We told David to get any and all information on the Montclair house while I continue to look for more houses to see.  I tried to convince Priscilla that this was the house we wanted, but she was set on seeing at least 50 houses before we decide as her friend Becki looked that 50 before she decided.  As I thought 50 was a little excessive, I truly thought it would be a good idea to see as many as possible, if only to educate ourselves on what was out there.  I then stretched out search criteria alittle wider in order to have more options.  My main concern was that we may not have any more to see in our price range or the area we wanted.  I raised the amount by $50,000 and made a new search.  It is amazing what $50,000 can do to a home search result.   Anyway, I was not willing to drop the extra 50k on our new home but in such a shitty housing market I thought it was not a bad idea to at least view homes out of our range.  I truly only did it thinking I could find someone desperate enough who would drop the price into our range.  It was that and Priscilla needed to see more homes.  Just enough to convince her that the Montclair house was the one for us.

We told David that we wanted to do Saturday and Sunday and see as many as we could.  I gave David a list of 15 houses.  Saturday we started our journey.  We saw 15 homes in one day.  Not one impressed us.  I mean there were some good ones.  Some new ones.  Some with basements.  But not one convinced us the Montclair house was not the best one out there.  Monday, we made an appointment to see the Montclair house again, just to help us make the decision.  Tuesday we had made up our minds.  We were ready for the next step:  making an offer.

to be continued…