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Forever House
Submitted by: Kiya S.
Washington StateI am a 28 year old mom of a boy and girl. My husband I own a lawn care company.
My story starts about 7 years ago when my husband and I were looking at buying a house. We loved the area that our apartment was located in but could not afford to buy a house there so we bought in a less desirable area of town that had been rehabilitated. Our neighborhood had all of the houses that were there torn down and new ones built. We bought a 1084 SF home with two bedrooms and one bath thinking that we would sell in about 5 years and buy something bigger and in a different neighborhood.
Fast forward 5 years and two kids later and our home was worth about $50,000 less then we bought it for. We were having trouble with the some of the neighbors and really wanted to move.
We had been working on living the principals of The Secret for about a year at that point and had seen many aspects of our lives improve. So we sat down and made a list of everything we wanted in our new home and neighborhood. Then I set to work trying to get our house sold. The real estate agent finally told me that it just would not work. So I went to a lawyer to see about short sale. He said that we would not qualify and were better off walking away from the mortgage.
Feeling defeated I started thinking about doing just that, walking away from the place. Many of our neighbors were doing that. I decided that the universe would take care of it and I just had to wait a minute and let it do it’s thing. Every time I left my mom’s house (she lives in the neighborhood that I wanted to live in) I would picture myself turning and going through the streets instead of getting on the freeway. I took my family for walks in the neighborhood we wanted to live in and would drive around in my car and just look at houses when I had free time.
Then I spoke to a mortgage broker who told me that if we could rent our house out for six months or more, then the bank would not count our old house against us 100%, only about 25%. Then some friends of ours said, out of nowhere, that they would love to rent our house if we ever wanted to rent it out.
We thought about it and decided that we did not have much to lose since our only other option was to walk away or stay in the house. Worst case we could always move back in, so we took the chance and rented to them. They knew the neighborhood and the problems we had long before they wanted to rent from us so we hoped that they would be willing to stay long enough for us to get some equity back.
Meanwhile we found ourselves a rental that was just barely in the neighborhood we wanted, right across the street from a very desirable public school with a big enough garage for my husbandâs business.
It was amazing how we got the place. The landlord was set on having a family there with small children so he pretty much pushed us in there above other prospective renters. He turned out to be a very good landlord by fixing anything that went wrong right away. He had never even met us as he was in Hawaii at his bed and breakfast, he only spoke to me over the phone.
At the time I was terrified that we were doing the wrong thing and my whole plan would fall apart for one reason or another. But things were moving quickly and anytime I got nervous I would look at my vision board and just picture our forever house with a bedroom for my boy and one for my girl, an office and 2 bathrooms and a big living room and dining room with a shop and garage for my husband all for under $225,000. I loved being in our new neighborhood where my kids could play outside without me worrying about the neighbors or scary dogs. I got to sign my son up for kindergarten at the school across that street because we were in the right zone.
We had planned to stay for a year in our rental to make sure we had all of our debts paid off, so at the end of the year after we paid off the truck, we started to look for our forever home. We needed 5% down so we had saved up some money to help get us started.
Then we got some bad news.
We had a huge tax bill. It was everything we had in savings. I was so upset for a bit but decided that the universe had not brought us this far to fail so I knew that there must be another way to get the money. We decided to put my husband’s Harley up for sale but it just would not sell. So I ran some numbers and realized that if we just saved like crazy, we could have our 5% in 3 months. So I started saving and we started looking at homes.
Surprisingly we found one very quickly.
In the ad it said that it had 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and a large garage. It did not have many photos and had been for sale for over a month. Not exactly what I was looking for but it was a good price at $215000 so we went to look at it.
When we went in the house I immediately saw that it had my really big living room, and dining room. I saw that the one bathroom was very long and could easily be made to have two sinks, something I had been picturing. Then once I got past the first two bedrooms I saw that it had an office! I have no idea why this was not put in the ad but there it was. Then I saw that the garage had an attached shop! It was even a one story home so we could grow old in it. was so excited. My husband was not as excited because he could see that the place needed a lot of updating and he really wanted another brand new home like what we had. I persisted though and we put in an offer of $200,000. They took the offer and said they would pay closing costs and we set the closing date for the end of June when we would have all of the money for the down payment.
$200,000 turned out to be perfect. The bank called later that day and said that they could not lend us $225,000 but when I told them we were buying for $200,000 they were fine with that.
As June drew nearer, I was a bit nervous about getting the last bit of our money. I was going through our bills and realized that our mortgage on the old house had not come in the mail.
Then I called the company and they told me that we did not owe for that month because we had been ahead a month for all 7 years of our loan. I was very surprised but realized that this meant we could take the money that we got for rent and save it. I thanked the universe for such a windfall. Then just after we closed on our new home, I got a check in the mail from our escrow of our old house for $500. We had not gotten an escrow check in about 4 years so it was a shock and I was thankful once again.
We spent an extra month in our rental to remodel the new house to suite us better. We added a half bath so it was now a 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath, with office and attached shop and garage. Perfect for us. Then when I did my final walk through with our landlord, he gave us back every penny of our deposit.
Now I sit in my new office, in our quite neighborhood, just about 4 blocks from my mom’s house happy as a clam. My son is going to go to a great school even though we are no longer in the zone. My kids now have their own room, my husband has his shop, and I have my office and a lovely kitchen. For the first time ever we are going to host Thanksgiving because we finally have the room for everyone.
Every day I wake up and thank the universe for giving us this house, our forever home.