house

It has been a very long time since my last blog and for good reason. The last 3 months can easily be summarized with one word: house. Courtney and myself put in an offer for a house somewhere in late august, our offer was accepted, we had a roller coaster of an escrow, recieved the keys to our house on November 20th and we officially moved in on Dec 6th. That is the extremely condensed version. The truth is that this has been such a process that there have been nights where we could not even talk with people we were so shell shocked. The economy is in a historic tumultous time, getting our loan was a miracle. The truth is there were many people and God brought us through this.
We started getting our finances together in mid June. They want your last years taxes, the last 2 months of bank statements of all accounts (bank, CD's, anything), our last 2 pay stubs, and our credit reports. But not only that, we were incredibly blessed by family and friends and recieved money for our downpayment, and even those gifts, we had to have a signed letter stating it was a gift, all receipts of the transactions, as well as bank statements from these people! It was rediculous. Because of all the bad loans, they had tightened the regulations so much that they needed every piece of paperwork that exist.
Our house we originally saw on the market, but it was way out of our price range. It was a short sale, which means the people were in the process of foreclosing, but weren't foreclosed yet. That is typically a HUGE red flag that says don't bother putting in an offer, there are too many people involved. In a short sale, basically the house is being solf for less then the owners still owe on the property and the bank has to agree on the price because they are just going to loose that money. The price it was listed at was not agreed on with the bank, so it really meant nothing... the bank, while they didn't own it yet, had to agree on the price, essentially deciding how much money they were going to loose on the property. On short sales, a lot of time, people will submit an offer and not hear back from the bank for 3-6 months!
One of the greatest things about the house is that we are next door neighbors with Dewey and Sarah colemen, who have become some of our closest friends since we moved out here. We were already in the same prayer group where we would get together on thursdays for prayer and watching The Office. Also, the house is only 1 mile from the church!
Anyways, we saw this property and had our heart set on it, even through it was out of our price range pretty significantly. We looked at places we could afford and really didn't like our options. Most of the places were very small or too far away from the church, the community of people we wanted to put ourselves into. One morning while visiting Courtney's parents we saw that the listing price was reduced 100k!!!!!! All of a sudden it fell into our price range (that we thought) and we could put in an offer.
The next week we put in an offer on the place. They got back to us in 4 days (supposed to be 3-6 months!) and accepted our offer!!!!!!!!!! All of a sudden we were in escrow. Our finances were always a problem. We have been smart with our money, but the reality is that we don't have a lot of it. Because i am a pastor, my pay is filed differently then most typical jobs, so there were a lot of issues of my income and how it is reported, taxed, and if it was considered enough. While in escrow we were haveing so many problems that we started a 2nd loan application just in case. Things with the first loan had deteriorated and we heard a lot of good promises from this other company that it would be a "slam dunk". The money was going to be very tight. At this point in the economy was the week where Countrywide was bought out by B of A, WAMU was almost going to go belly up, lehman bros went out, and fannie 7 freddie mac were just starting to get into the hot water they are in now. Money was tight, and we were trying to get a loan. Our broker explained that it is almost like people are looking for excuses not to give loans now instead of if you qualify or not. Because my salary as a pastor was atypical and we were getting gifts from people lenders just weren't wanting to lend. At one point we were approved by Wells Fargo, but then 2 days later they changed their downpayment requirements and we no longer were approved!
Courtney and myself were surviving on prayer. We were so wiped out emotionally that we would be praying for God to just get us through that day. It was assumed that everyday a new twist was going to happen and we were either going to get the loan, or not get the loan. It seemed to change everyday and sometimes twice a day. Finally one night it just became too much for us to handle and it was like we had worried so much, we just couldn't worry anymore. I think it was that night that i threw up my hands and said "not my will God, but yours be done here" I wanted the house soooo bad, that any risk of loosing it was catastrophic. Once i was willing to have whatever God wanted i has amazing peace. It was about 2 months into the process, but i was actually at the place where i should have been the whole time. God was good and patient with me, he was always there leading, but i foolishly thought it was up to me to get this done. Someday, i will actually keep this perspective :-) but until then, God is patient with me and is very gracious.
Eventually we came back to our original lender, who suddenly could approve us, we able to waive about 4k of closing costs, rates went down, and we didn't even have to pay any PMI!!!! It was the best situation possible!!!!! We has to ask for 2 different escrow extensions to get it all done. We were using 2 brokers, 3 lenders, and ended up with the absolute best loan possible.
We also had issues with the size of closing costs, getting appraisals, getting the house inspected and seeing the needed fix-ups, being told it didn't have termites then later finding that it did, former owners that were potentially going to try to squat the property, and constantly needing to submit more paperwork to our lenders that we now needed to have. My tax guy in Sacramento even became part of the process! What always seemed to be a brick wall only turned into the next obstacle that God was going to be leading us around.
Our loan finally went to documents at Escrow on Tuesday morning, i was at our pastor retreat, but i met courtney and we signed the papers, handed over the largest checks we have ever written, and finally had a house! We got keys on thursday night and had a bunch of people over on friday night to just celebrate what God did. It is truly a miracle that we are homeowners expecially this house.

that is our journey of getting the house... the next installment with chronical our journey of having to fix the place.



I thank God for bringing us through all these obstacles. There are even more then i mentioned here, and all these were dragged out through the course of months. I also want to thank Tricia Onsgard. She is our real estate agent, and has become a very good friend. Through the whole process she was looking out for us and was praying with us and helping us at every step. She used just about every connection she had from lenders to inspectors to appraisers to just about everything. She did more then i could have ever expected and i think more then we even know about. The whole time i didn't know who we could trust, but we did trust Tricia and she was a true God send. If God didn't bring her across our path i really don't think i would be a homeowner right now. She is fantastic at what she does, but more then that i really felt like she cared for us and was basically a shepherd guarding us from many of the wolves and dangers in the process. I give her my ultimate recommendation to anyone who needs real estate help.



anyways, next comes the fix up process....