Pending...

I have some very exciting news for everyone...I am in the process of purchasing my very first home! I am beyond excited and nervous all at the same time. Everything has gone so quickly, but here is how it all started...

Last year I started toying with the idea of buying my own place for a few reasons...it's a good time to buy, my place is small and cavelike (although the view is amazing), my landlords were putting the house up for sale, and I'm an adult now, and having a mortgage is what adults do. My friend Henry knows everything about real estate, so I asked him if he'd start to keep an eye out for something I may like. He started to email me some places, and I started a list of features that I would want. A little yard, a garage (oh how I long to not park on the street anymore where my car is in danger of drunk drivers and metro buses), an extra room for an office or guests, and in a nice area still close to the city. I also knew I wanted a townhouse as opposed to a house since it would be newer construction and less likely for me to have things to fix or replace.

Then we started looking at places in person. This was the fun part. I love house hunting! I love going into places and seeing how different homes are set up. I should have been a realtor because I could do this everyday. As we saw more and more places, it got easier to weed out the no's as soon as I stepped into it. We looked all over...Ballard, Fremont, Greenlake, Madison Valley, Central District (yikes!), Leschi. Then I decided to check out West Seattle to see if it was a place to consider. As soon as we crossed the bridge and into the cute little neighborhoods, I fell in love. Pair that with cheaper prices and nicer homes, I was sold.

After our day of looking in West Seattle, we went home and Henry did another search. He sent me a link to one town home that we hadn't seen that day that looked nice. We decided to take a look the next day, and this one seemed like a winner. It had a nice fenced in yard, a garage, two bedrooms upstairs each with their own full bath, a laundry room as opposed to a closet with stackable washer and dryer, very nice finishes, and close to the bridge in a cute little neighborhood-y area. I thought about it all week, going back and forth on it. On one hand it had everything I was looking for and was a great price, on the other I had only just started looking in the area and what if another place I liked better would come up? We went again to look the following weekend, this time with Mom and Clint. Seeing it again and getting their opinions sealed the deal and I knew without a doubt I wanted it.

The next day, Henry and I met for lunch to go over the offer he had written up for me and I signed off on it. The next 24 hours were nerve racking. The sellers had received another offer, so there was some back and forth, and even a time where I thought it was gone forever. I don't think I got any work done that day, and probably developed a couple stomach ulcers. Finally Henry called and said they were going to accept my offer! I had a couple more things to initial and sign, but it was starting to set in that it was actually happening. We now have a contract, I paid the earnest money yesterday, and tomorrow is the inspection. If all goes well, I'll be closing on April 17th!

a "pending" flag I'm happy to see!