We are officially homeowners! We closed on the house this morning and received the keys and garage code. The closing process wasn’t nearly as bad as everyone made it sound like it was going to be. I mean we had to sign a lot of papers and it got a little tiring, but it really wasn’t that bad. During this process we finally met a few people who previously we had only spoken to on the phone, like the lending agency and title company people; we also met another one of the previous owner’s sons. I think the process took about 90 minutes, but i honestly don’t remember. It all went by pretty quick. Afterwards Melissa and I went to our new house and started cleaning (we had a lot of stuff already in the truck at the closing), I also changed all of the locks on the property and learned how to change the code to the garage keypad. Call me crazy, but I think security should be the first thing done when buying a new home! Later in the afternoon my brother Chris came over and we went out to Lowe’s to purchase the new refrigerator that Melissa and I had already picked out, he was nice enough to let me use his veteran’s discount. Then it was back to do some more cleaning. The only issue we have run into so far, is that the city turned the water off to the house instead of transferring it to us. We think this is because the old owners realtor messed something up in the paperwork. The city will be out tomorrow to reinstall the water meter and turn the water back on.

The house inspection was today and it went really well. I used the same inspector that I had last time we made it this far into the process, as I really liked him. Nothing major was discovered, which is a good thing. It appears that some of the windows may be original to the house (1964) but not all of them, so at some point we would look into replacing those. Other than that the only thing that needs attention is the electrical box. It appears that at some point there was water getting into the box so there is some rust and a couple of the fuses breakers should be replaced. Other than that everything appears to be in good shape, looks like we are moving forward!

The owner came back with their final counter on the house, they are asking for $130K. After a lot of discussions and considerations we are going to accept that and move forward with the process. If anything comes up in the inspection we can always walk away or make concessions on the price to either lower the offer so we can make the repairs or have the owner make them. We are excited, but still not getting our hopes up too much, we’ve been this far once before and it went south. It is progress though, which is good, because I am now really itching to get out of the apartment and into something of our own.

After a lot of serious looking for the past few months, we are putting an offer in on a property in Westland. They are asking $140K, but with the market analysis we feel that price is high, so we are going to offer $125K and keep our fingers crossed. It’s a nice two-story 3 bedroom (more like 2.5, one is small and has no closet), 1.5 bath with a 2 car attached garage and a full basement. Everything we were looking for. In addition there is another garage in the back that apparently used to be the owner’s late husband’s work shop. This will come in real handy for storing the motorcycle and lawn stuff so we don’t lose garage space. Now we wait and see…