this is not our first time buying a home.

at one point about a year after being married, we were fortunate enough to both have steady and decent jobs in tennessee to buy our first house. the process was a blast…we lived in a condo that didn’t have any particular lease timeline on it, and we just essentially wanted a house in a good neighborhood. nothing really was on our horizon and we didn’t know what to expect.

it was leisurely (at least i think i remember it being that way!), and wil and i were discovering each other’s tastes in homes and neighborhoods through the process. we knew very little about remodeling and house projects, but the thought of an old home with some character sounded idyllic. wouldn’t you know we settled on a track home that was built in the late 80′s with a garage that stuck out in front :/ …all the ‘cool’ old homes in historic east nashville were always just a little too old, or the streets were just a little too rough. or maybe we just weren’t cool enough.

everything about the process today seems different compared to 4 years ago. maybe being in different regions of the country, a different state of economy, and different phase of life would have something to do with it?

this time we are older and maybe a *little* wiser. we are very honed in on what we like and don’t like, and we are well aware of what’s important and what’s easy to compromise on. we even have the confidence and experience of a couple home improvement projects under our belt. of course, those things help us…but the fact that we have two very looming deadlines (baby and apartment lease), an income almost half of what it was, and much more specific needs make things a bit more complicated.

in addition to that, the market is so competitive right now that there’s no hesitating or you will miss out!

as a buyer, i don’t really feel like we’re in the driver’s seat right now, especially when we see so many listings switch to pending before we can get a showing scheduled. and to think we already had a deal not even make it past the first step…

there was one little house that we were able to keep in our grasp just long enough to make a move on it, and pending appraisal over the next couple weeks, it’s ours! to say this was divinely orchestrated is an understatement. on the day we were supposed to hear back on the first deal, we went out to see 4 or 5 more houses just to be safe and not lose time, in case they didn’t accept our offer. while killing time at home before walking out the door to meet our realtor, wil found 3 more listings…one i was pretty excited about that looked like it came on the market literally within the last 24 hours. but we just assumed we’d see those on a different day since it was such short notice to add those to our list…especially with our realtor heading out of town for his family’s spring break the next day.

about a couple houses in during our time together i mentioned this one new listing in particular and said it looked good on paper and i was interested in seeing it at some point. because it was vacant, our realtor had the ability to just go ahead and get us in that day. well wouldn’t you know it was just as great in person as it boasted on paper, and hit EVERYTHING on our list. and it was even within 6-8 blocks from 3 different couples we have become friends with these past few months through church. we walked away and during the rest of the houses that we were slated to see, i think wil and i both knew that this house would work for us and that we should consider making an offer.

we parted from our realtor under the impression that we’d think about it over the evening, and with him flying out of state the next morning, he said he could coordinate any more showings through his coworker while gone.

not 1 or 2 minutes later passed and he called and said, ‘do you want to write up an offer right now?’ as he realized he had more time free than he thought and that we could go ahead and meet back up at the closest coffee shop. and thank goodness we did, as it turned out when we heard from the seller that night, there already was an offer placed on the house (remember i said it had only been listed for about a day). but he liked ours better!

so much about this house transaction is never how i expected it to all go down…most houses we’ve seen have been ones we’ve pored over online for a a couple days, driven by, then walked through in person a couple days later, and then we’d come home and deliberate pro & con lists and then ultimately throw in the maybe/trash pile. this house was in our viewfinder for a mere 5 hours from discovering it online to writing up an offer.

but when you know, you know.

(this is just a picture from the listing...)

it’s got the perfect balance of age (built 1945) with some nice updates in the kitchen and bathroom, but then it’s a clean slate on the outside and the basement for us to make it our own over the next few years. and enough space that 5 years from now, we won’t be cramped. can’t wait to share the rest with you as we begin moving in! thinking someday down the line some fruit trees, landscaping, and maybe a pop of some window trim might be kind of cute. what do you think?