House Hunting: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly Part II

I wanted to have the full "newlyweds buying their first house" experience. I didn't want to go look alone, so we waited until Stephan returned from Iraq to go up and look...together...like normal people. Like the normal people on HGTV (can you tell I'm obsessed with that network?).

We decided to go up to "power shop" for a day and a half. We finally had a set realtor, official paperwork sending Stephan to his new base, and our financing all settled.

Two days before we left, a new house went on the market. I knew it was THE house. I called Stephan right away to look at it. It was house-love at first sight. Nothing that was currently available in our price range was even comparable. It was at the top of our must-see list. And it had just come on the market so we had a great chance of getting it before it was even on the radar.

When we arrived in Ft. Walton Beach, our realtor, Mari, had about 7 houses lined up to look at, including "the house." I knew some were not going to be it, but it seemed like a good idea to have different houses to compare. I did want the full "normal" experience, after all.

The first was just not impressive, small, and had a more apartment layout. The second we saw was THE house. We loved it and the only things we really had to do to it was clear out and fence the backyard and buy a washer/dryer and refridgerator. (I'll give all the gorey details about it in another post.) The next house was like a cave...there was no sunlight getting in. It was also across from what looked to be a haunted wooden shack. The next place we walked in and out of because it didn't pass the no smell test (smoke smell...yuck).

We then humored Mari and went to an old school house from the 1980's. It had the sunken living room and no updated bathrooms or kitchen. This one's the ugly, if you can't tell. The last had many things on the list, but had a completely decked back yard and was in a flood zone. It was also the furthest from the base.

We easily decided to move forward with the 2nd house! It was ready for immediate occupancy so they wanted to move at the same speed we did! The only drawback was that it was a relocation, so the price didn't budge much, luckily it was already fairly priced. We went back and forth and finally struck a deal! It was so much more stressful than the tv shows. We just kept having this fear that someone else would put in an offer, but we finally found the house we were meant to have at the time we were meant to have it.

We had tried to do things in our own time, but we finally realized we needed to start trusting and waiting for the right time. We ended up being truly blessed! More on THE house later.

Here's a little teaser pic! More pics and details to follow!