Wow. What a crazy few weeks it has been in the Kubizna household. Let me go back a few months to explain how we got to where we are today. This past spring/beginning of summer Trey and I were discussing the option of moving. We have always know that our current house was not the place we wanted to stay for the long term but we kept going back and forth on staying and selling. We remodeled a couple of times and always thought that each remodel would make this house feel like home but it just never felt right. Don't get me wrong, this house is awesome and beautiful from the great location to the wonderful setting but it was never right for us. Now that we have made the decision to send the girls through Northpointe Christian Schools we decided to start looking at other options of areas to live. We didn't need to be in Forest Hills schools anymore so that opened our housing options to a wider area. We really liked the idea of being able to reduce our mortgage and maybe get a house that fit our family needs better. We started looking at houses at the beginning of summer to see what was out there. We figured we would take the summer to work on some things on our house that needed to be done in order to put it on the market. We started looking in the NE area of GR close to NPC schools and also in Walker close to our church. Either area would work well for us. While driving through the Beckwith neighborhood one afternoon we spotted a development that looked nice and decided to try to find how to get to it. It was only accessible by a sidewalk from where we were at. A little driving and investigating and we found the neighborhood at the end of a condominium association. The neighborhood was exactly what we were looking for. Each house had about an acre or more of land and was only accessible by a single road that lead in and out. We looked into the selling prices of the houses in there and realized this was not the market of homes we were looking for, it was not going to reduce our mortgage and plus there were no homes for sale. A few months later in beginning of July we had still been looking and working on our house but didn't find anything that excited us. I was doing my usual search of grar.com when a new listing came up that I hadn't seen yet. The house had been on the market only 17 days, was a ranch style home which was what we wanted and was in the neighborhood we loved and never thought we would live in. The price was not going to lower our mortgage but would keep it the same. Not the ultimate situation but worth a look. We met our realtor over at the house and feel in LOVE with this house, the neighborhood and the yard. We found out the house was a short sale and decided to put in an offer contingent on the sale of our house. Knowing it was a short sale we offered them 35k less than the selling price thinking we would be negotiating with the bank on the short sale. We decided to list our house that weekend with the hope that if they accepted the offer it would take a few months for the bank paperwork which would give us some time to sell. The sellers came back with a counteroffer of only 10k less than the selling price and still wanting to leave it listed. We found out that they would have to pay back any loss by the bank. We decided to sit on it and wait for our house to sell. In the process of putting our house up for sale we continued to look at other homes and never found anything that we really liked. We decided that if the house we liked sold we would probably just build. This would mean moving into an apartment for a few years while we found land and a builder and drew up plans. Not the most exciting idea but workable. I was still struggling with the idea of if our house sold and the house we wanted was available did I really want to get into another mortgage of the same amount we are in. The house was bigger and new then ours but our whole idea in moving was to reduce payments not make them the same. I knew that the house had already been sold on a sheriff sale and the current mortgage company owned the home and the sellers had to pay the bank back in 6 months or the bank would own the house. The 6 months would be up in October. (it is amazing what you can find out on the internet these days) We had not heard a word from the sellers since our original offer. This brings up to exactly two weeks ago. I was driving home from Bible Study when Trey called me. He said "I am not sure I should be telling you this but I am going to anyways. Our realtor just called and the sellers of the house we love will sell us the house for 50k less than the asking price if we can close before October 18th." Talk about shock. That is just over two weeks and the house I love was not being offered to us at the price I wanted to buy at. As soon as I got home I started to make phone calls to find out if this was possible. We still had our current house and had no hope of selling any time soon. After calling our credit union and talking with the lender he made it sound possible. Trey and I talked about this Friday night and said we needed to go back through the house on Saturday before accepting the sellers offer. We meet the realtor on Saturday and still loved the house. We signed the contract and decided that if this was the home God wanted us to be in then everything would fall into place. If we were not suppose to go down this road then a road block would be put up and we would step back. A few stressful days at the beginning of the week and lots of prayers and as of today we have a closing set for Monday the 17th at 3pm! Are we excited, yes. Are we nervous and anxious because we haven't sold our current house yet, definitely. Do we feel this is the home and neighborhood that God has directed us to, most definitely. There are so many things that had to happen to make this house come into our lives that it could have only been by God's intervention. If we had not of put the original offer in they wouldn't of know we were interested. If we had sold our house earlier we probably would have bought it for a higher price and not felt that comfortable with it. The credit union we are members of was able to process a pre-approval and mortgage close in two weeks. The finances all come together just as they needed to be.
The neighbors came over on Saturday when we were viewing the house and they seem great. All the kids already get along and were playing together. Cecelia keeps asking if we can go home because she wants to play with her friends. She is ready to start packing and move there now. There are 4 families in the neighborhood that go to NPC and there is a bus that drops and picks up the kids. It just feels really right to us. We will receive occupancy of the house on Monday right after closing. Our plan is to go through and clean the house, have most of it painted, clean the carpets and then start moving in. The goal is to be completely moved in and have family over for Thanksgiving dinner. (Which is good since our oven still doesn't work so I wasn't sure how I was going to cook a turkey in the toaster oven:) If there is a positive to not having sold our house yet it is that we are not in a rush to get out of our current house. We can take our time and organize/declutter as we go. I do feel a little overwhelmed with the idea of packing and moving but very thankful it is not on a tight time schedule.
So if you don't hear from me for awhile on the blog it is because I am busy packing and moving!!
Here are a few pictures of the house from the listing.
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| The address is 2384 Deer Trail, it is located off of Perkins between Leonard and Knapp, west of 96. |
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| The house was originally built in 2005 but Kent Skills Center as a class project. There are about 6 houses in the neighborhood that were KISD projects. All the woodwork and built ins were made by the students. |
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| Family Room |
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| Sitting room attached to kitchen/dining |
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| Basement |
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| Other half of basement |
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| side yard |
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View from end of backyard
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Amber