Appraisal News

We just heard from our mortgage broker that our appraisal came back and was more than what we are paying for the house! That is great news for us because it means we are going to automatically have some equity in the house the day we get it. Other than that we have just been getting all of our paperwork in order and every couple of days I get an e-mail asking for something else. In the past week or so we have probably faxed about 70 pages worth of information over to them!

So as of today we have less than 2 weeks before we own the house! We have decided to move on July 15th, which will give us some time to get in there and paint a couple of rooms (the salmon pink in the front bedroom has to go! And we are taking volunteers to help, any takers?). We have started planning things we need to buy to move in. We have to buy a refrigerator, we want to get a room size carpet for the living room (which apparently to get what we want we have to have it made), and we need a table for the breakfast nook. Of course we have a whole list of other things that we would like to get but those three are at the top of the list right now.

This weekend we were down in the San Antonio and Austin areas for wedding and visiting friends and family. I have some good pictures but I am too tired to post all of them today, I will work on that tomorrow! It was definitely a very fun, but long and exhausting weekend for us. We have a few more busy weekends this month and I am betting they will fly by. Time seems to move more quickly each year and we seem to have more to cram into that time each year!

Be on the lookout for lots of pictures in the next couple of days!

Not much

That's what is going on here, at least with the house. We filled out our loan application this weekend and have to get that and some other financial stuff to the mortgage broker this week. We have done some window shopping, we are hesitant to buy anything until we actually close and the house is officially ours! The appraisal is supposed to be this week, we were told probably by Wed. So that is next up! I believe after that we just have to get our loan approval (shouldn't be a problem) then we are good to go!

We went to my friend Heather's wedding last weekend and are headed to San Antonio next weekend for Bethany and Eric's wedding! I will try to get up pics from both of those after next week. (I am being lazy today). This is our last free weekend for a while so we have tried to relax a little bit!

Inspection

Things are moving quickly here. Today we had the inspection done. It went great! The inspector only found a few things that were of concern. But all of which are really not a huge issue to get fixed. So we did write an addemdum to the offer to ask them to fix three things that were the most important to get fixed. We are hoping to hear back from them sometime tomorrow. At this point we aren't going to walk away from the house if they won't fix these things, but we would like them to so we don't have to deal with it. (So back to some more waiting!)

Next on our list of things that need to be done, the appraisal. Our realtor said that would take at least a week. Once that is done we are on to the last step before closing.

It seems like there is so much to be done and we have a lot of time to do it, but I have a feeling the time will pass very (too) quickly. Which is good and bad at the same time! I think both Josh and I are feeling some nervous excitement at this point.

We have tenatively decided that we will be moving July 15th. So a little less than 2 months from now and a little less than a month after we officially close. We have a few things to get done in the house and for the house before we move in. We are looking forward to all the things to come in the next 2 months!

Teacher of the Year Gala

Last night was the Teacher of the Year Gala. Josh had found out in January that he was nominated for beginning teacher of the year. He wrote and essay and his principal wrote a letter of recommendation, both which a committee based the winner off of. Josh unfortunately did not win (I highly disagree with this decision!). But I am proud of him for even being nominated. And we had a wonderful time at dinner. It was short and sweet too, always a bonus! Here are some pictures from last night.



Josh and I at the Gala




Josh being announced and walking across the stage



Josh with his award (he also got a bag full of goodies)


In house news, we recieved the contract signed from the sellers. We signed it tonight when we got home and Josh is taking the contract, escrow check, and option check to our realtor tomorrow morning. Our inspection is scheduled for next Tuesday at 2pm. So we should know at that point if there is anything majorly wrong with the house, if not, we proceed to, what else, more waiting! Waiting until June 22nd to close. At least we will be packing and planning to keep ourselves busy. We are hoping the next month flies by! I can't wait to start planning a housewarming party!

I will update more as we hear more about the house!

Until then below are a few pictures from our anniversary dinner at Five Sixty.



At dinner on our anniversary with the skyline in the background



Yummy dessert

In the elevator after dinner, trying to get the skyline again

In front of the Reunion Tower sign

Yes it is! (complete with pictures)

As in yes, the third offer was the charm! We were driving to the Teacher of the Year Gala when we got a call from our lovely realtor, Nan. She said that she had a counter offer for us. The counter was right at where we wanted to be originally but I wanted to get off the phone and talk with Josh (although he very enthusiastically said yes while I was still on the phone and I wrote down the offer and showed it to him). We did some calling really quickly and decided it was a great price for the house and we were going to accept it! I called Nan back and told her we were going to accept (followed by the question "Now what?!"). So we should be getting the papers to sign tomorrow and we will get those sent back and then on to the inspection.

We are still in a little bit of shock that we will have a house in a month! Well we are going to close on June 22nd and take possession on June 24th. We don't know when we will actually move in though.

Ok, I am sure I will have so much more to say but that is all the words I can think of at this point. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking for me!

The front of our house



View from front door



Study area to the left of entryway

Bedroom 1

View from bedroom 1 into bedroom 2



Bedroom 2




Dining room

Living room

View from the living room into the kitchen

View from breakfast nook into the kitchen and living room

Mudroom between breakfast nook and laundry room

Master bedroom

Another view of master

Master bath

P.S.- I will update with more from the Teacher of the Year Gala and some picture from that and our anniversary dinner tomorrow or this weekend.

3rd Offer's a Charm?

We went out and looked at more houses tonight and found one we fell in love with. Love the neighborhood, love the floorplan. A little more expensive than we would like but still well within our budget. We both walked in and felt at home. This was our second home of the night and we had one more to go. We decided that we would go ahead and look at the third house to see if we liked it. After looked at the third house we decided that we would make an offer on the second one.

So we went back to the realtor's office and did some research. We had to go get a snack and think about what we wanted to offer because it is really priced well, but we don't necessarily want to pay asking price. After consulting with multiple other people, along with our thoughts and our realtors thoughts we came to a price that we felt was a good starting point. According to the seller's realtor, there have been no other offers on the house, and it seems that they want to get out quickly. So we are hoping to hear something back before the end of the week. More waiting, of course!

We celebrated our 2nd anniversary yesterday. I can't believe we have been married for 2 years! We just stayed home and did dinner here and I made cupcakes. We went out on Saturday night to Five Sixty to celebrate and had a wonderful evening. I will post a few pics tomorrow.

Tomorrow night is PISD's Teacher of the Year Gala, which was supposed to be a few weeks ago but got rescheduled due to the *dreaded* swine flu. Ridiculous. Josh doesn't think he will win beginning teacher of the year, but I definitely think he should!

Mother's Day and other stuff

We spent Mother's Day with my mom. We went to church, brunch then went shopping. (YAY!) Then we spent the rest of the day just hanging out at home. Which was nice because the past few weekends we haven't had much time to do that.

We went a looked at more houses on Saturday. One of the houses we looked at was a new build that hasn't even been built yet. We really liked the neighborhood and floorplan, but we aren't sure that we want to go the route of building. But we are still thinking about it. Other than that we didn't see anything we love. We probably won't go look again for at least two weeks as Josh is at a training next Friday and Saturday. So hopefully there will be more houses that come onto the market in between now and then and we will find something soon because in June we are gone almost every weekend.