Finding Contentment

A speedy home buying process

01:36 PM, Wednesday, December 5, 2007 .. Posted in Family .. 2 comments .. Link

Last week I called our loan officer to tell him we decided to buy the house we have been renting for seven years. I also told him we wanted to wait until after Christmas.

On Friday, he called back to tell me that we had to close before the new year, or we run the risk of losing our loan. You’ve probably heard about the record number of foreclosures recently. If I am understanding correctly, the guidelines or requirements for home loans are going to be much more stringent in 2008. Who knows if we would still qualify?

So I have been running around like crazy for three days, trying to do all the stuff needed to update our loan package, lock in our contract with the seller, find the best rate on homeowner’s insurance, etc.

We had a real estate agent, but had to drop her as the seller didn’t want to use an agent for this transaction. I can’t blame him either. He is already selling us the home for a very good price, simply because we’ve been renting from him (either in this house or the one we originally moved into when we married) for 12 years. He also didn’t really want to sell the house, he did it because I didn’t want to move and begged him to ; )

But since he’s not paying for a real estate agent, and we really can’t afford to pay for a real estate agent, that means that I am doing all the leg work. And we have never gone through the home buying process before…. Luckily, we have a good loan officer who is very helpful.

Please pray that everything goes smoothly. We have planning to buy a house since the beginning of the year, but Mark’s job loss put us in a bind. I thought we had lost our loan, but God saw fit to still bless us. We had to start saving all over again, though, and I’m scared we won’t be able to come up with quite enough money.

However, we really believe this is what God is leading us to do. Our struggles just make us better appreciate our blessings, don’t they?