Our house hunt

We were looking here in OC for quite some time, and with what we could afford were seeing a lot of mediocre condos that were bank owned or short sales. Nothing that showed any pride of ownership. We actually found one that we were pleased with and went into escrow later to find out it had some water damage and mold issues. Nothing we were interested in taking on, so we backed out and decided to take a break from looking for a while.



A few months break from house hunting was nice, because it is sooooo exhausting! Matt and I had a lot of talking and thinking to do. He hadn't been totally please with anything yet, and I was happy with anything he would be happy with at this point. We were at two different stages of the game on what our home should be; I considered it a stepping stone and he wanted a place to call home forever. With what we could afford here in OC, I think he finally realized his forever home wouldn't be in OC.



Since the day Matt and I have known each other I've thrown out the idea of moving inland. However, he was born and raised in OC and loves it here; the notion of leaving this beautiful weather and commuting to work wasn't in his plan. Me, I'm flexible and portable too, I'll live anywhere once... But on our break from house hunting I reminded him that his older kids were getting older and will be on their own before he'd blink an eye. He secretly started doing some research on the homes in the city his older kids live in. He finally let me in on what he found and was interested in looking at homes there.



We were about to leave on a trip to Costa Rica returning after the new year, so we told our realtor that we would like to begin looking in that area after we returned. However, this one particular home seemed absolutely perfect and had been on the market since May and was being sold by the original owner (unlike most which are bank owned or short sale properties now days). So we decided to look at it and a few others while we were out there that weekend. Matt definitely had reservations about this at this point, and I heard about it the whole way out there, "you know this isn't a for sure deal, we are just looking" he kept saying. I understood that and agreed, especially since we were about to leave on a vacation, but that one house was laying on my mind (and his too). He told me before we left, besides his apprehension, "I can guarantee that that "ONE HOUSE" is the only one I will like". We saw it, and yes it was "THE ONE".



We made an offer then opened Escrow on December 10, 2008. It has been a long and hard road and it has had a few curves along the way but it looks as if the road of escrow is coming to an end and the new road of home ownership is to begin in a few weeks! Our realtor keeps saying that we shouldn't call it our own until the day we close, but we are on the home stretch here (I can feel it in my bones).



The new house is in Grand Terrace, only a few blocks from the older kids house. Is has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms is about 1300 sq ft. A pretty small house, but it is on a HUGE, 10k sq ft corner lot. It has a workshop built onto the garage and RV access/parking on the side. Matt is especially ecstatic to be closer to the older kids and of course Charlotte is too, but she can't quite understand yet what is going to happen. I an very thankful too, it hopefully will bring all of us closer, not only by distance but emotionally too... this move has been long overdue.



We are scheduled to close escrow by the 24Th, which is in a couple of weeks. So I am starting to get a little nervous here, just haven't been able to really do anything since escrow is so volatile... Now we are just going to bite the bullet, go forward and start calling it our own ... here is the first step.... a picture of our new house.