Free $8000. We'll take it!

After hearing about the $8000 tax credit for 1st time home buyers, we got the itch to start looking for a house. We started the search on-line and driving around different neighborhoods to see where we might want to buy. With our approval letter in hand, we met up with our awesome Realtor (Jessica Amber with Zip Realty) who walked us through our house hunting adventure. I also can’t forget to mention the most amazing lender ever, Daniel Crosley, from Bank of America Mortgage Loans. He is ranked the 2nd highest in Mortgage Sales in all of Southern California. He is very efficient and on top of things during the whole process. If you are looking for a Mortgage loan, let us know and we will hook you up with him.
As we walked through each home we saw a few good, a lot of bad, and even more ugly. We put a few bids on some houses and prayed that God’s will be done. The first one we were out bid, the 2nd and 3rd ones we just never heard back on so we continued our search. Then I found one on-line that was on the market for 2 days. So I said to James,
“Let’s go check it out NOW!!!” We learned that the fewer days a house is on the market the better your chances were to put in the 1st bid and /or best. So we put in our highest and best offer and continued to pray. We found out within a couple of weeks that they took our offer!!! Really?? Are you serious??? We could be home owners.. for real?? We were so excited to hear this great news. Now may the process begin! Waiting and waiting and faxing and inspecting and signing and emailing and waiting and phone calling and urgently faxing and signing and signing and signing and waiting and dropping off forms and did I mention.. Waiting?

God has definitely taught us patience through this process. The whole process was going really smooth until the last month. There were some set backs with the escrow company which had us on our toes and biting our fingers nails as the days continued to pass. It’s getting closer and closer for me to have the baby and we knew that we needed as much time as possible to get the house all clean , painted, wall paper removed, ceiling scraped, moved and ready to go by our move out date of July 5th and before the baby comes (due July 9th).

Ahhhh , so much going on at one time.
It’s crazy what happens when you sit back, be patient and just put everything in God’s hands. Worrying about the time frame wasn’t helping the process go along faster.

So saying all that, we officially got our keys on June 16th! We were super excited to get started on the house that very night. We have an amazing group of people who have already started and volunteered to help us through this transition in our life.

You all have no idea how much we appreciate you.

It's crazy to think that we have been married for a little over a year now, we are turning 31; becoming parents for the 1st time, driving a “cool looking, fast” wagon, and own our 1st home! We are extremely blessed and are excited to see what God has in store for us in these up coming years. Please do keep us in your prayers through all these new endeavors. We really appreciate every one of you. We can’t wait to have our first get together!!!

Jessica and Daniel we can’t even begin to thank you enough for all that you have done for us. You have been amazing this whole time.
We will refer you to anyone that comes our way.

The house is located in Riverside off the

60 fwy and Van Buren. Its about 15- 20 mins away from where we live now.

Here are some pictures of our house on the first day we got our keys.. I will be posintg more of the “Before” and during the demo. I will continue to update the blog as the house gets it’s “makeover”.

Enjoy!

Our friend Jade said that she would approve of any house that we bought as long as she got to demo something with a sledgehammer. We put her to work right away on a 3 sided wooden wall that was built under the patio cover. I was very excited to see that go down!

And there it goes.

She also took out some shelves that were in the garage. I was so bummed that my camera wasn't charged on the first day. Her boyfriend Kris took these with his Iphone.