After almost nine years of marriage, Brigham and I are finally about to join the home-owners club! We spent the last week in Utah and looked at EVERY house on the market that fit our criteria. I'm sure that we saw more than 50 homes. At the end of 3 days, we had 4 that met most of our criteria (though not all), and we knew that it was time to make an offer. I was disappointed that there hadn't been a single home that had made my heart sing, but time was running out. The home we liked the best was overpriced (as determined by comparables sold in the neighborhood) by about $100,000, but we decided to make an offer to see if the owners would see the light. They didn't. I really struggled with the idea of making an offer on our 2nd choice for some reason, so I asked to see it one more time. When our realtor (Brigham's dad-- he was extremely patient with us-- thanks, Dad!) tried to make an appointment, he was told that there were already 3 offers on the house and that one had been accepted. The other two homes that we had at the top of our list were good homes, but we just didn't feel like we should spend that much money on a home that was missing several key elements that we wanted. We were discouraged and started talking about the possiblity of renting when we moved and continuing the hunt then, but the thought of pulling our kids out of their schools again after who knows how long made me miserable. As I looked back on events, I felt strongly that we were being guided to somewhere-- I just had no idea where. When we got back to where our kids were, I felt strongly that I didn't want to give up, but the only thing I knew I could do was look at the new listings from the previous 2 days that we hadn't checked. We literally had seen everything else. So I jumped on the computer and looked, and lo and behold-- there was a new listing that met our criteria. It had been listed only 2 days earlier, and it looked great from the 5 pictures they had posted. I immediately shouted to Brigham, "I've found our home! We need to go see it now!" His dad got on the phone right then and set up the appointment, and away we went. To make a long story short, we saw it a couple of hours later, and it was love at first sight. It had everything that we wanted and more. It was located in northern Sandy-- almost exactly half way between the two hospitals where Brigham will work, had a big back yard with a basketball court, a great play structure, and plenty of grass for a soccer game. It has a beautiful kitchen and a large family room in the basement. We could hardly contain ourselves as we walked through it-- we knew it was our house. We also knew that it wouldn't last, so we stayed up to midnight filling out all the paperwork to make an offer. First thing the next morning we sent it off, and it is a good thing because the next morning it had two more showings-- one of which was a second showing for someone who intended to put in an offer afterwards. Fortunately, ours was already in and had been accepted (verbally)! It really was a blessing that it all worked out the way it did. It was such a great house in such a good location for a good price that our broker said that there's no way it would have lasted through the weekend. Had it been listed before we arrived or even a few days later, we would have missed it. Had I not seen it right when I did, we may not have gotten our offer in first, and we might have lost it. We are verbally under contract until tomorrow when it should become official, and we have been giddy with excitement ever since Friday when we got word that our offer had been accepted. How grateful we are for the many blessings that have been poured out on us!
