We accidentally saved up money to buy a house. Yup, you read that right. We were not planning on buying a home, but it all fell right into place, and I'm so grateful.
Somehow, in our budget, we were making some errors in our favor. I didn't realize that it was happening. I'm not sure how long we were doing it either. As we returned something to a store, we forgot to count that money as part of our budget again, and it started to add up. I'm not sure how often that happened or what else we did to save money, but one day I was going through the budget and I really went through all of it, and there I found several thousand dollars extra. That was a nice surprise.
As Matt and I were praying that night, we decided to pray about what to use that money for. I had the thought pop into my mind, You could buy a house. After praying, I told Matt the thought that had come to me. A year previous, we had tried to buy a house and had been denied because Matt didn't work a set 40 hours a week. We weren't too excited to try again, but it had been our goal to buy a house. I just thought it would be years before we would be able to buy one. The housing market has also gotten really high, and we didn't believe that we could afford to buy a home.
We cautiously reached out to a lender to see if we could get pre-approved, and we were shocked when it happened! We didn't really believe it was possible to get pre-approved. We would have to have two loans. One for the down payment, and one for the mortgage. The money we had accidentally saved was enough for what they required for the down payment loan. We could look for a house.
Looking at houses was frustrating. The market had significantly jumped in the last four years since we had sold our last house. What we could afford now was considerably less than what we could afford in the past. It was hard to find a house that would fit our family. Kitchens were small, most houses had no garage or a one-car garage, and it was kind of discouraging to think we had to settle for something we wouldn't really want.
I got discouraged and wanted to quit looking. I thought we should stop and try to find Matt a new, higher-paying job, so we could afford more of what we wanted and then look for a house after that. I was praying one day, and I said that I thought our top priority should be to find a new job first. Immediately, a thought came that no, a house was top priority. I felt that God was telling me to keep looking.
We had been debating about buying a cheaper run-down house to fix up. We weren't afraid of updating a house, and that seemed like a better chance to find something. There was a house we wanted to look at, but our realtor couldn't ever get a response from their realtor. Now the idea of a fixer-upper was in our heads.
The day before Halloween, a house came onto the market. It was listed as a 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house in a good neighborhood, and it even had a two-car garage! We had to look at it. As we walked through, it was evident that the house was in disrepair and would need a lot of work. It was priced a bit lower than the houses in the neighborhood were worth, and we soon saw why. It needed work. As we walked through the house, we discovered that it was actually a 5-bedroom house with 3 bathrooms. The two bedrooms in the basement weren't counted as they didn't have egress windows, and we don't know why the third bathroom wasn't on the listing. It was a blessing. We believe that the house would have had so many offers had the listing been correct. It was very hard to find a house with that many bedrooms and bathrooms in that price range.
We put an offer on the house on Halloween day, and we were able to buy the house the day before Thanksgiving. Buying the house was a complete miracle. Not something we planned or thought was possible. I know that God made all of that happen. Matt and I couldn't have come up with any of it, let alone believe that now was the time to buy a house.
We have lived here for five months. It really is a great neighborhood, and we love it. The house has a lot that needs to be worked on, but we're ready for it. We feel blessed for the happy accident of saving money.
Comments
Post a Comment