New Beginnings

New state.
New address.
New house.
New beginnings.

Our move to Wisconsin was undoubtedly stressful.  I rented a 20' truck which was too small of a truck to hold all of our belongings and that was after Derek convinced me to go up in size once already.  Wife fail right there!

It was a good omen that our truck represented Minnesota!

Two of Derek's coworkers were kind enough to lend their muscles and time to help us load the truck as there is no way me and Derek could do it on our own. Thank you Neil and Collin for being awesome!

Because it was just Derek and I moving us this time, we needed to tow my car.  Derek did fantastic driving not only the truck; but, the truck with my car being towed behind it.

Unloading always seems to go SO much faster.  Even when you have 2 moving trucks and two cars to unload into the garage.

My mom is a master of box tetris!

We ended up loading everything into the garage (to which 90% of it is still in there two weeks later) so we wouldn't have to shift things around in the house for painting and spraying ceilings.
In the end, Derek and I have decided we are not fans of moving and that we are going to be donating A TON of our stuff because we have too much of it.

Buying a house shouldn't be so difficult

I am actually curious why it is so stinking difficult to purchase a home.  Buying our house was such a hassle, one that has been so far worth it though albeit a hassle to get it.

Living out of the state you are trying to purchase a house in can be cut down to one word: challenging.  For nearly two months Derek and I traveled back and forth between PIA and MKE looking for a house to buy.  

The first trip that we actually met a realtor and looked at homes went fairly well.  We found a house we thought would work for us and put an offer in on it.  It was an older home with four bedrooms and over an acre of land in the lowest tax area around MKE.  We put an offer in on the house which was accepted and we thought the home buying this was super easy.  The next time we went to MKE for the home inspection revealed things might not be as they seemed.  The home had a lot wrong with it and things that were going to be costly to repair.  In sending an addendum to the owners they were not willing to fix anything.  And with a VA loan that was simply not going to work for us so we were back at square one looking for new homes.

After being discouraged with the first home falling through we traveled to MKE yet again to meet with our realtor and do more house hunting.  The price bracket we were looking at really wasn't revealing anything great or anything that we were willing to put an offer in on so after figuring out numbers we made the difficult choice to increase our price range.  Doing so opened us up to many more probable houses.

Day one of going to look at the new homes made us quickly forget and realize that we just jumped the gun on the first house we tried to purchase.  It made us more excited to see homes actually in the area where we wanted to live.  The very last home we looked at on the first day was the first home we walked into and actually said, "Take my money" before even looking at the whole home.  We put an off in on the house.  And then the homeowners decided that it was too low, too soon of a closing date, and that they weren't sure they wanted to move!  Who puts their house on the market and then decides they don't know 100% that they want to move!!!

Frustrated with the offer and owners of the house we fell in love with we stayed an extra day to look at new homes yet once again.  We found another house that had the most gorgeous backyard oasis and the house had been kept up really nicely.  So we decided to gamble and put an offer in on that house even though we still hadn't heard back on the house we loved.  This time because it was in an ideal area and it had 7 other showings the first day it was on the market, we decided to put an offer in above asking price.  The owners were frantic in trying to accept or decline the offer because they weren't sure they would be able to find a place to live by the closing date.  Again, who puts their house on the market if they aren't sure they want to move?!!!!  Or have a place to move into for that matter.

So here we were kind of stressing because technically we had put an offer in on two houses. We were waiting on the owners of the houses to make decisions before we ended up having to pull out of the house with the backyard oasis.  Meanwhile we were praying and hoping that the owners with the house we loved would agree to the second addendum we sent because if they didn't we were basically planning on being homeless.

Once we had the home secured with our good faith offer then came the troubles of working with an incompetent loan processor (who should not be confused with the excellent loan officer we worked with).  The loan processor was this young girl probably just out of high school who had no idea what to do when we had questions and no idea how to explain the things we asked questions about.  And the days before closing she was unavailable because she was on vacation (not blaming her, just very inconvenient).  Nothing is more frustrating than trying to ensure you have all the necessary documents and paperwork completed before your closing date when you cannot get a hold of your loan processor.

So I say, buying a house really shouldn't be so difficult.  Here is to hoping everything with our house in the future goes extremely smoothly!