Sawyer Ford Driving By: Home. Finally

Hello. Remember me? So the blog has been on hiatus for a few months, but I'm just about ready to start up regular posting again. Here's what's been going on: we bought a house!

Here is a somewhat condensed version of the whole long, painful process: when I last posted about the house situation at the end of the year, we were still on the market and had had two contracts fall through. This was...disheartening to say the least. Then in February we finally had another buyer! Our closing date was set for March 24, and the race was on to find a new house.

We. Looked. At. So. Many. Houses. Our realtor Matt Cupp of the Derek Maples Team at Keller Williams Realty was soooo incredibly patient with us. We were looking for 4 bedrooms, 2+ baths, a 2 car garage, roughly the area we were already in, with a still reasonable commute to work for Nick, fenced in back yard, AND a bonus room/5th bedroom for a craft room. It was the craft room that was a killer for us. There were 4 bedroom houses galore, but very little with a space for me.

Then we found this amazing house that we fell in love with. It had everything we wanted. Everything. And the craft space was a detached space the size of an extra long single car garage, with its own bathroom and huge closet. It was a foreclosure, bank owned, and bidding was open. So we put in our very best, maybe even stretched a little too far bid. But we felt pretty confident that we would get it. Our bid was solid, we had a closing date already set for the sale of our old house, and had already been through inspection on it. Nick's dad has years of construction experience, and he checked out the new property for us, so we were even submitting our bid with no inspection contingency.

Nick's parents loved it, my parents loved it, we loved it, the kids loved it. This was it. THE HOUSE. And then...

A cash offer came in. They went with the other buyers. We were devastated. But we knew God had a reason. And the old house was sold, so we had to pick ourselves up and start looking again. Nothing we saw appealed to us. Everything looked so unsuitable next to the house we had lost. We ran poor Matt all over Knoxville and Powell and Maynardville and Clinton. There were a couple of houses that would have technically worked, but our heart just wasn't in them. We actually signed a contract on one, but were relieved when the inspection came back with issues that allowed us to back out of it, because we just didn't love it like the one we had lost.

Then Matt showed us the newly listed house on Cartmill Dr. And we loved it. And we bought it. We closed on April 22 and moved in the same day. Right now there are still a lot of boxes in sight, but we are making progress. And there's even a craft room!

Here's a quick recap of the journey over the last year with selling and buying: 136 showings, 3 contracts, foundation damage and repair, 5 (FIVE!) extensions on the closing date, 4 weeks living with my parents, and 1 contract extension on the contract for the new house (because of the 5th extension for the buyer on the old house). This was the 5th house we had made an offer on, and the 3rd one we had had a contract on.

I have to give a shout out to our whole realty team. Derek Maples of the Derek Maples Team of Keller Williams listed our house for us last year in a very slow market and kept a constant stream of buyers coming through. As I mentioned, we had 136 showings. And he was a serious rock star when it came to getting us through closing. Unfortunately our buyer's finance company dropped the ball a number of times, causing the 5 extensions, which resulted in our closing getting delayed 29 days. Derek really advocated for us and ended up getting that finance company to reimburse us for the expenses we incurred due to those delays, which was a huge lifesaver for us.

Matt Cupp showed us house after house, and often checking listings out in person without us beforehand when we were unavailable for showings. He showed us houses as early as 7AM and as late as 9PM, every day of the week. He worked hard to get us the price we needed on the house we bought, and he showed up at closing with a lovely etched glass casserole dish as a housewarming gift. He was almost always available to take my call, and he was awesome about getting back to me quickly if he was unable to answer. Even though we went through way more listings that most of his clients, he never got impatient or tried to push us into buying a house that we wouldn't be happy with. We always felt safe in his care, and we could tell that his goal was our happiness, not his commission.

Brandon White is the Director of Operations for the Derek Maples Team, and he really is the glue that holds it all together. I could always call him if I had a question, and he was there to hold my hand at closing on the old house. He followed up on a lot of items for me, especially during the drawn out closing process.

This was a really long process for all of us, through no fault at all of anyone (except maybe our buyer's finance company, but that was only the last few weeks), and they never gave up on us or lost patience with us. I can't say enough about how much we love them. If we ever decide to sell this house (not that I can even imagine that at this point), we will definitely go with them again.

Most important to us was the fact that this is a team that puts God first. Their motto is God, Family, Real Estate, in that order, and they have a weekly prayer meeting for their clients every Thursday morning.

So anyway, that is what the last 5 months have looked like. Now that we are finally home, we can start settling in, and I can start sharing a few of the crafty things I've managed to squeeze in!

Since right now we're not quite ready for pictures, I'm going to leave you with the listing photos, courtesy of Zillow. We have put up a fan in the master bedroom, but otherwise we've not done much else.