Searching for a Home

After I graduated college (finally!) in May, and after the big graduation party, I headed out to Colorado to stay with Brennan. My goal coming out to Colorado at the beginning of June was to "divide and conquer" and find a house to put an offer on. Brennan was doing the best he could while still working six days a week on finding a house. But I needed to put my head down, take on the task myself and focus solely on finding the right house in a good area, and that's exactly what I did.

I began by getting a sense of the area from Brennan. He had talked with his co-workers and they said the more north you go from the dealership he works at, the better  the area gets. So I got on Redfin.com and started searching in the areas a little north of where Brennan works. Redfin has a cool site and you can see the history of the property, what other homes are selling for in the area, and if your lucky, pictures of the outside and inside of the home. They also provide an aerial view of where the home is located, so you can see if it backs up to a freeway, park, apartment complex or business. You can also find out where the closest schools are, lot size and square footage. They pretty much have it down.
I searched Redfin and wrote down over 30 properties to send to our Realtor, (we found her on Redfin too), to go and see. She narrowed it down to properties that were available and not sale pending. There are a few things you want to keep in mind if you are moving to Colorado. The first one is the heating bill, you will have one. Our Realtor told us you do not want to have electric heating, because after one winter it will break the bank. Good thing to know.

Another thing I didn't know and realized through this process, was that there are different types of layout styles of homes. In the area I was looking there were: Bi-levels, Tri-levels, Ranch-style with a basement, Tri-level with a basement, and Traditional Two-story, with or without a basement. Just after a few of the homes I looked at, I immediately decided I did not care for a Bi-Level home. To give you an idea of what a Bi-level is like, you walk in the front door, slam into a wall or a staircase and you can only go up or down. Not a very inviting entrance way into a home, in my opinion. So I axed out Bi-level homes all together. We had a certain price range to keep to as well, under $155,000. I'm sure my fellow Californians are gasping at that price, but that is one of the huge reasons we decided to move out of California.

So to put it simply we were looking for a house $155,000 or under, a fixer-upper (beater on the block), two or more bedrooms and baths, in a nice neighborhood on a cul-de-sac or a circle, with as little neighbors on all sides as possible. I think I looked at over 25 houses. Some were winners, so we put an offer in, but to find out five other people already beat us to it. Some of the homes were not taken care of inside and out and very creepy to be walking around in. The condition of home our price range had to offer was usually vacant, bank owned or foreclosed, possibly smelly and definitely dirty. But that was the reality of the first time home buyers from California.

So after looking at over 25 homes, getting my hopes up with two offers and declines, crying and feeling defeated,  I came down to the last couple houses. The second to last was a fixer for sure, but had a porch out front, with a big shady tree in the front yard and a huge back yard that desperately needed landscaping. However when we called to see if they were accepting offers, they told us it was being taken off the market and put back through foreclosure court. Another one bites the dust.
Then on to the last house on the list. My Realtor warned me that I'll probably like it, but that the Sellers contact is a program called Altisource and its outsourced to India. So I toured the home and took some notes: nice size backyard, backed up to a green belt, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, mature trees on property, Tri-level with a basement, 2 car garage, and of course a fixer. I looked at the Realtor when we were walking out and told her, I think this is the one. She rolled her eyes and said, "I knew it." So we called to see if there were offers on it. It was bank owned, and had only one previous cash offer. I took Brennan to go see the house after he got off work, and he agreed he liked it too. We asked the Realtor to put an offer in of $140,699.00, and they accepted, (after some counter offers).
We had officially started the house buying process. It was June and I reached my first goal of searching for a house we both liked, making an offer, and having it accepted. Now the journey really begins!