This house chose us...

Jarrod and I have spent the last few days digging and searching and looking all over the MLS for our next house. We did visit a few, but nothing reached out and grabbed us. Yesterday, I started out another search in Plano - I put all my parameters into the search fields and it pulled up 203 houses. I started with house number 203 and worked backwards. I got to about house 199 and decided to take a break. I was frustrated... and usually the thought of house hunting THRILLS me. I was just so bogged down at the thought of searching for a house on the MLS, then driving all over the place to these houses, then creating an offer, then dealing with the listing agent, then the negotiations, then the option period blah blah BLAH. I got overwhelmed and just stopped.

I checked my email... and I had an email in my inbox that had been sent five minutes beforehand. It was from Southwest Alliance (which is the asset manager that handles HUD homes... government owned foreclosures). We had bid on a home back in November that Jarrod and I loved. It was in an ideal neighborhood for us (location wise), and had a lot of things we were looking for. It was already under priced, but we bid quite a bit lower... because it was a little higher than what we wanted to spend. We knew we really didn't have a chance to win it, but we tried anyway.

So, in my inbox was an email saying that that house had come back on the market... and that they would accept an offer that netted them X amount of dollars (which happened to be $13,000 lower than what we originally bid). I called Jarrod, and he remembered the house right away (which says a lot for the house). We went to see it again, and then put in a bid for the amount that they specified. We got the house.

How bizarre is that? Out of all the houses that we've ever looked at in three years (and that could be close to hundreds)... this is the one that stuck with us the most. Timing couldn't be more perfect. It took all the house hunt / negotiation / contract yuckiness out of the picture. This house FELL in our laps.

It needs a good amount of work, and some floorplan alterations. The masterbedroom is TINY and there is a TINY closet and a TINY TINY bathroom.

This house is going to be ours though. I don't think we're going to do a quick flip on this one. It's perfectly what Jarrod and I want. It's cheap enough so that we can do smaller investments (that we won't have to live in!) on the side.

It has an amazing backyard with what seems to be a really nice pool and hot tub. (it's covered right now). I will take some better pictures later... but here are the blurry ones from the MLS

Outside of the house, needs a paint job. I'm NOT doing it this time!!!

This is the first living area looking toward the entry way. This living area is pretty small, so we're probably going to take down the wall the separates this room from the other living room

Here is the second living area. It has pretty nice hardwood floors already, but we probably need to get rid of them so that we can have consistent flooring in the living areas, especially of we open the walls. It would be pretty hard to match this wood. Through that window is the backyard

Here is the kitchen. The picture above is taken from the kitchen. It's open to the second living which is really nice. There's a garden window above the sink overlooking the backyard. These cabinets seem to be pretty new, and have lots of cool built in things inside. I love it! Needs a stain or paint job and some hardware... but I love the kitchen!!!!

No picture of the backyard yet. Maybe tomorrow.