being a homowner

There was this episode of Will & Grace where Will buys an apartment. Him and Grace are talking inside his new empty apartment and he says to her " I am a homo - ner!" I thought this was hilarious and never forgot it. (i tried looking are a clip of it on youtube and came up empty.)

This is the story of Sterling and I purchasing our Condo.

We started looking back in 2009. And at first we were looking in Carlsbad. For the $ you can buy a single family house with a yard and a 2 or 3 car garage. Since Sterling and I both work in South Orange County we thought that the drive wouldn't be that bad. We decided that the drive would be bad and choose to start looking in Orange County.

Now our realtor is fantastic. Edie has been so awesome through this whole process. She ended up being the 3rd person we tried to work with. She looked at so many places with Sterling and I. She has been so patient and wonderful. We looked in San Juan, Aliso Viejo, Mission Viejo, Laguna Niguel and Rancho Santa Margarita. Basically it came down to the things we wanted were at least 2 bedrooms, had to have a 2 car attached garage and lower HOA payments. 

We had an offer on a place that was literally across the street from my parents neighborhood, but we would be in another ward. The bank counter offered $30,000 more than our offer and we told them to pound sand. Sterling was bummed but for some reason I felt like it was right. During the time we had the offer in we did not look at any other places. We learned our lesson. 98% of the properties we looked at were short sales. And by the way they should not be called short sales they should be called LONG sales. There is nothing short about them. It will be almost 6 months from start to finish for us. UGH

On December 6th, 2010 we put on offer on 40 Via Cordoba. We kept looking around at other properties. We would get an email pretty much every day alerting us of places that came out on the market that fit our criteria. We looked at soooo many listing sheets, this lists all the specs of each property.Here are the specs this property -
Beds - 2 plus a loft attached to the master

Baths - 2

Sq feet - 1367

3 levels

2 car tandem garage

miles from beach - 20

Here are some pics (these are from the listing sheet just so u have an idea)

 

This is the dinning room and kitchen. But ignore the hard wood floors. I will talk about that later in this post. The mirror on the wall is fabulous and its one of my favorite things. to the left of the kitchen is going to be Jaxson's room. And the photographer is standing in the living room. 

 

Here is the kitchen granite tile counter tops, stainless steel appliances,  restaurant style faucet and lots of cabinets.

So we got the phone call that our offer was approved by the bank on April 1st, 2011. Ya I thought it was an April Fools joke too! By April 4th we found out that there was a problem with the condo and the HOA. The previous owner had installed beautiful hard wood floors in the living room, dinning room and kitchen. According to the HOA you can not have hard wood floors over some ones living area. Some one else lives under neath us, between our garage and living room. My parents have had this amazing contractor named Peter doing all the work on my parents house. So I called him an explained the situation and he called his guys and they got to work. Sterling, the previous owner, Doug, and 2 carpet guys from Peter all tore out the beautiful hard wood floor and installed used carpet just to make the HOA happy. (we are going to re carpet with brand new carpet before we move in, trust me!) 

So the HOA came and inspected and signed off on the problem. Now we had to get the loan paperwork going and escrow. Holy Cow Paperwork. I defiantly destroyed a whole forest on my own. Geez Louse. More speed bumps came and went, thanks to Edie and we should be getting our keys to OUR condo this week.

I am scared, excited, nervous and stoked all at the same time. Now I really have to be an adult and like make a mortgage payment and everything. It will slowly but surely turn into Sterling, Jaxson and I's home. I can't wait for that. And if we live in this place long enough Jaxson will go to the same middle school I went to and the same high school that Sterling and I both graduated from. 

Please check back for more pictures and updates. Moving will take place Memorial Day weekend!!!