Moving in together

My partner Chris and I have been together for about three and a half years. In June of 2014 we realized that our leases would be ending soon on our apartments and we should think about moving in together since we had been a couple for about a year at that point. We weren't sure if we wanted to buy or rent, but we were leaning toward renting at least for a year or two until we knew that we could live well together.

Somewhere near the end of July 2014 we were over at our friends condo playing games and having some drinks and the subject of us moving in together came up. Our friends wanted to know where we were thinking of living, what type of housing and if we wanted to buy or rent. At first we felt like we were being grilled a little, and began to wonder why. We told them probably rent, but our options were still open. They then got very excited and said if we were thinking of buying they didn't want to push us in any direction, but one of the occupants at the end of their building was selling his unit. At first we were very apprehensive because buying something is a very big life event, and we weren't even sure we were ready to buy together at this point. But they convinced us to at least go talk with him and take a look at the condo.

The condo for sale was only three doors down from our friends' place and they had sent the owner a text asking if we could stop by. With his assent, we headed over the next day to talk and see what it looked like. We fell in love when we walked in. All of the condos in the buildings are pretty much exactly the same, but this one was in pristine condition. It even had a skylight, which had to be specially approved by the condo board, and it is the only unit with one. Walking up the stairs (it is a second floor unit) you can see the sunlight spill into the room from the ceiling and it is a wonderful sight. The living room is surrounded on 3 sides by windows that look out on beautiful green foliage and opens onto a huge deck lined with sweet smelling jasmine. Not only did the jasmine smell wonderful, but it offered a more private area on the balcony obscuring other peoples view. The unit had 2 bedrooms 1 bathroom a laundry room, and a moderately updated kitchen. The owner also wanted to sell us some of his furniture as he didn't have room for it and was going to give us a good price. The condo buildings are conveniently located very close to shopping and right off of I-5, and it has a pool!

There were so many good things stacked up it was hard to say no. We only had a few days to make a decision as we were going out of town and the seller needed an offer if we were going to make one. We went to see it on Wednesday the day before it went on the market, and we put an offer in on the following Monday evening which was the deadline for offers to be made. There were 3 other offers in but we decided to offer asking price and when we heard back the news was good and bad. The good news was, they were going to take our offer. The bad news was, we needed to make our offer higher. That doesn't make sense does it? They decided to take our offer because we had a large down payment. So we got lucky, again. We decided to offer a bit more than asking price and they officially accepted out offer.

The next two to three weeks were riddled with emails to and from the loan officer, the real estate agent, us and the seller. We actually got even more lucky. After going through all the boring legal stuff and getting almost to the end of the process, we had the bank come in appraise the property. Because some of the units had been foreclosed on and sold very cheap recently our condo was appraised very low and the bank basically forced the seller to lower his price by quite a bit!

Everything seemed to be falling into place exactly as it needed to. We closed on the  condo in early September and moved in by the beginning of October. If that isn't the easiest house buying process, I don't know what is. I can't help but think that my mom who passed away just 8 weeks before this all happened had something to do with all the coincidences that helped us get this place. We are still happily living here and plan to for some time.