We are moving!

What a journey the last 8 months have been!  As someone that's been "keeping an eye out" for the perfect house since we basically moved into our current home in Ooltewah, I knew I had found IT in August.  The house had just gone on the market and was FSBO.  We called and made an appointment to see the house right away and it was love at first sight for sure.  The house is similar to our current one in several ways - layout, open kitchen to keeping room, full basement, etc - but there's so many other things that are just perfect for us.  Also, the house is in Cleveland which is closer to both of our workplaces and in a beautiful neighborhood.  The yard is also great for Henderson and Baby Gray. 

We made an offer the first part of August - mind you, before we were pregnant, and we knew we had made a low offer BUT it was also based on what had recently sold in the neighborhood/area and we expected a counteroffer.  Well, the sellers didn't counter and that was pretty much it.  Or was it.... for months, I checked daily to see if the house was still for sale and I may have driven by a time or two.  

In the meantime, we found out we were expecting!  I kept pining over the house and we decided to reach back out to the sellers the first weekend in January.  They hadn't had much activity on the house over the holidays and were gearing up to list with a Realtor come spring.  We told them our offer still stood and they made a counter offer! Their counter was much less than we were expecting so we were very happy to accept.  About the second week in January, my parents came down to help me get all my Christmas decor put away and we started packing up things at our house and getting it ready to list.  During January we had 3-4 showings but we've had ZERO in February.  

There were also some hiccups along the way with the new house and getting though underwriting - no appraisers would accept the job!  It went thru 8 declines before one would accept - apparently no one wanted to do a little extra work in finding comparables in the area.  We lost a week waiting for someone to take the job and then we had to wait for the appraisal to come back.. and then it did.  The house appraised for 30k less than the contract price so I had to be the one to call and break the news to the seller.  He was so defensive and it was SUCH an awkward call.  It was good news in theory for us because it meant we could potentially pay less than expected but bad news too because the sellers could either dispute it or remain at their price meaning we would have to pay the difference in cash on the day of closing.  Adam and I were neither one willing to pay more than the appraisal price so we were back to waiting to hearing from the sellers.  Funny thing is, the appraisal price was $10k more than our initial offer back in August... had they accepted then, they wouldn't have been paying mortgage for 8 additional months and I wouldn't be moving at 8 months pregnant!

We finally worked through the appraisal and the loan was unoficially sent to underwriting.  The loan company had additional questions on the comparables used so we had another "delay of game" all while getting closer and closer to our planned closing date of March 1 - talk about stressful!

But alas, we were cleared to close 4 days before closing date!  We closed on March 1 and I was able to get utitlies switched to our name and we got to go see our new home sweet home!  We had pre-loaded the van and my car so we could start dropping off loads on our way to/from work so we made our first unloading trip and I took pictures of all the rooms - I'll share as we get everything all settled.  

I even had painters scheduled to be there at 8am on the 2nd and I have all the bathrooms and bedrooms repainted - they look amazing!  Just wait until you see the pictures.  I am most excited about getting Baby Gray's nursery set up - furniture is FINALLY being delivered next week and we are moving moving next Saturday.  The chaos has officially arrived!

Our new home!