In early 2010 my husband N and I decided it was the right time to buy a house. We were going to get married that summer, and the lease to our ridiculously expensive apartment was going to be up around the same time. We got pre-qualified by a mortgage broker, and it wasn't for much. We had to stay in an area that was central to both of N's jobs at the time (he had a second job throwing newspapers at the time) and unfortunately it's not the cheapest area to live in. We started looking at houses right away, but because the first go-around of the first time home-buyers tax credit was about to expire houses were selling fast.
After having our hearts broken a few times, and seeing more decrepit and trashed houses than we'd care to remember we almost considered giving up and buying a townhome. But early one morning I got a call from our relator saying that a new listing had popped up in the perfect location. N was at work but I met the relator at the house hours later and well... it was a sight to behold. But moreso than that, it was a SMELL to uh... smell.
As we walked up to the door another realtor was showing someone out. And I noticed on the kitchen counter that there was already a sizable pile of relator cards already laying there! The house had just gone on the market a few hours earlier! The house was in sad shape, but I reckoned that a fresh coat of paint and a few updates would spiff her right up (along with a liberal amount of Febreeze.) I called N at work and said we should place an offer on it immediately, to which0 he tentatively agreed. We ended up offering $1,000 above asking price and they accepted our offer. Let me just say right now that the previous homeowners got SO lucky.
Other drama ensued but in the end we ended up with the keys in our hands. I'll never forget our mortgage broker asking us if we were going to bring sleeping bags over to spend the night in our first house. N and I just looked at each other and laughed. We weren't going to be spending any nights in there for quite awhile.
So without further ado, here are the first pictures I took of the house. (I apologize for their small resolution. The computer I had the originals stored on crashed and these were salvaged from Photobucket.)
