Homeownership Round Two

Round One of homeownership had middling results for the Coffman family. We loved our first house, but only owned it for two years and were forced to sell for slightly less than what we paid. Given what others in this country went through with real estate in the same period, I think we escaped pretty well. But it was less than great. An uncle of mine owned a home for around 18 months and made over $100,000 when he sold out. That is great. Good is making money. Middling is what happened to us. Poor and tragic are the other categories, in increasing agony to the seller.

But here we are, general American and youthful optimism still intact, buying another house. This time in Salina, Kansas. It is a lovely house and both of us grin stupidly as we consider the fact that we are about to move in to what we consider a dream house. This post will tell the story of how this hopefully fortuitous event came to be:

When we accepted the offer in Salina we decided that we would be there long enough to merit at least considering purchasing a house. We have rented since we left El Paso, living in four places in that time, and we hate the instability that comes with renting. Moreover, as much as I disliked selling our house at a slight loss, what I hate even more is the idea of sending $650 or so a month in rent right into the furnace every month. So we looked. And we looked. And we looked. And there just didn't seem to be anything that we loved. 

But there was one that we liked. And would have been a fine house. We made a frenzied search of the rental houses in town, but found none that we would want to live in for a few years. So we made on offer on the house that we liked and would have been just fine. We made the offer last Monday and when we hadn't heard anything by Wednesday we were a bit worried. We had made a fair offer. The house had been on the market for close to a year, starting at a price way too high for the house. It took them over four days to get back to us and their offer was hardly worth considering. We promptly reoffered, low again, and they responded that their first counter was their final offer. I was pissed off at this point. We liked the house, but it was certainly nothing special. Certainly not the type of house that anyone in their right mind would pay over the appraisal value to own. But this put us back to square one, really, with about three weeks left until we moved to town. Not fun.

We went back to Salina on Saturday to look at some more houses. And found nothing. I mean, the houses were fine. Don't get me wrong. I don't mean to sound conceited or snooty or to imply that we were looking for the perfect house. We really weren't. We're adaptable. Two years ago at this time we were living in an attic apartment with no living room, no air conditioning, and a heater that turned off every time the wind blew. In Kansas. That apartment was luxurious compared to our voluntary month of sleeping on the ground every night that preceded the move to Kansas. But none of the houses felt like they could be our home. And when you have a kid and want to have more and want a dog and chickens in the backyard (more on this later), you are looking for a home. Defeated, we went back to Wichita, debating about which, if any, of the houses we would decide to put an offer on. 

While I parked in front of college football for the afternoon, Clara started looking around in a different price range than we had been exploring before. And she found it. The house. And she knew it right away. In her excitement, she wanted to put an offer on it before we had even physically seen the place. I talked her off that ledge and we called our real estate agent (who has been fantastic through this whole thing) and she set up a showing for us the next morning. We drove up to Salina again and the minute we walked in we both broke out in smiles. This was our house. It was old, built in the 1920s and had all of that, what is the word. . . craftsmanship, that seems to lack in the modern day McMansions that are thrown up in a couple of months. Hardwood floors on the main level and in the bedrooms. A formal dining room with a bay window looking out into a big backyard. A breakfast nook for Owen to play in while Clara cooks. Three bedrooms upstairs. A finished basement with built in bookshelves and entertainment center so that we can put our TV downstairs and not have it be the central focus in our main room. A beautiful sycamore tree in the front yard. An enclosed patio on the side of the house with room for our patio furniture. And a huge backyard with trees and a shed and space for a garden. And then the icing on the cake.

For awhile now we have wanted to keep chickens in whatever house we land in. There are multiple reasons for this, but we don't need to talk about that here. For the purposes of this story, just know that we wanted them. Anyway, so we are in the upstairs bedroom taking our tour of this house and I look in the backyard and see a building that hadn't been on any of the pictures of the house on the internet. And I think, that sure looks like a chicken coop. I will forego keeping you in suspense and simply say it was. Our realtor called it our sign. And indeed it was that, too.

We went back to her office and wrote up an offer, asking for the coop to stay. We got a call back on our way home saying that the offer had been accepted and they would even let us keep the chickens that they currently have. It all worked out. Perfectly. Beautifully. Providentially. And for those of you keeping track at home of coincidences, the house we are buying was listed Friday afternoon. About the same time the other people turned down our offer. I have never been in the school of "When God closes a door, he opens a window" theology, but I do believe he loves to bless us. And that he has done.