The Offer Is In...

All right. Time to talk house-hunting again!

So to re-cap: Back in March, we were stoked about finding our first home to buy. We found the house, but getting the loan was a different story and one we didn't expect. It used to be easy to get an FHA loan up until a couple years ago. Nowadays, having an offer letter from a prestigious law firm is no longer good enough. You actually need to have pay-stubs to prove you are not an irresponsible liar and do indeed have a job! Of course, this news was depressing because it meant we would have to move to Las Vegas and rent first. Sure, not really a big deal. Lots of people do it this way. But my heart had been dead-set on moving into a home before I had any idea it would not be an option. While moving can be exciting and I'm looking forward to being near family (and even a good couple of friends), I'm still sad to leave my Utah family and friends behind. Having a home to focus on was something I was truly looking forward to.

In fact, moving into our first home was so stubbornly set in my mind that when our plans were thwarted, I felt like I was going through the "grief cycle" all over again! (Ok, please keep in my mind I'm being a little facetious here.)
First, I was in denial: What?? No, that' can't be right. There must be something we can do...(followed by many calls to banks/lenders to figure out our options. This lead to...)
Second, bargaining: Dan, I'll do anything! Maybe we can rent first, or pay more money...please, something!
Third, anger: I can't believe we just lost our dream house! Stupid people, screwing up the housing loan system for us...
Fourth, sadness. Lots of sadness! (No tears--I'm not that much of a baby. But lots of frowning was definitely going on.)
Before the final stage, there was lots of jumping around within this cycle from start to finish and back to start again while we contacted everybody we could think of and hit every angle.
Fifth and final, acceptance: This sucks but apparently, there is nothing I can do about it. Vegas and homeless, here we come...

Now that I'm a pro in the grief-cycle department, it should come to no surprise that even after acceptance, I bounced back to denial and bargaining again. There had to be a solution! So that brought Dan and I down to Vegas last weekend to look at houses again.

We actually found a number of the same "3320" models of our original dream house. The only difference in this one particular layout that we loved (because the interior was just as clean and newly painted/carpeted as the original) was that instead of two master bedrooms there was only one, with the extra square footage used to make the loft bigger. It's such a better use of space! Dan and I both felt really good about this house and no others, and after praying about it, decided to throw in an offer. We found out we can get a loan pretty quickly after Dan starts work (like mid-september) so now we gave the seller two options:
-give us a longer escrow to save the house for us or
-if needs be, we could pay rent for a couple months until the loan comes in. This would allow us to move in right away, which I would love! But it's definitely pricier option, and only one we want to do if it makes or breaks the deal.

So now the waiting period... I am not entirely convinced the house will be ours. But that's ok. I think my reality and patience has matured a bit over this process (fortunately for Dan because I'm pretty sure I was driving him crazy with my demands). We should have an answer of some sort by Tuesday.

I'll let you know!