Well, since my last blog, a few things have happened. First to come to mind is that we found out our apartment building is going into foreclosure which means... yup, we're getting evicted. Our rental company called and told us we didn't need to pay rent for august (sweet) and that once the bank took over, we'd have 90 days to find a new place. Of course I panicked and my pregnant hormones raged. But finally after a lot of mental conversations and lots and lots of prayers, I found myself okay with it the next morning. We were moving but we'd have 3 months, rent free, to find another place. HA... so after many attempt to get a hold of the landlord (not rental company) to find out the details on when all this was going to take place, we discover that the receptionist was mistaken in telling us we would have 90 days to find a new place. In reality, we will have 30 days. So our official move out day is September 19th. :( Luckily I had my break down the first day. Now I have been blessed enough to stay calm. (by calm I mean that I'm not having a hard time coping. it's still frustrating but my ability to handle it is a lot better) Now that we have the eviction notice, Joel and I are trying to get "cash for keys." Apparently it's something that some banks do to get tenants out quickly and with minimal damage to the building. Joel's brother works with someone who ended up getting $1500.00 this way. We wouldn't mind $1500.00 :) Our attempts have turned up no luck so far.
The hard part for me was figuring out why this happened. We moved into this apartment 4 months ago. While we were looking for apartments, we were SO inspired to get this one. We weren't sure if we could afford to live this far away from Joel's work and bang(!) Blessing. They messed up on our apartment contract and said we would owe $70.00 a month less than we had originally thought it would be. Coincidence that the dollar difference between what we paid here and the place closer to his work was exactly what Joel paid for gas? I think not. After moving here, we couldn't believe how much we appreciated and enjoyed being so close to family. 30 minutes wasn't that bad, but 5 miles is much better. -- Then we find that we're being evicted. Nothing in the area is even close to comparing to what we have now. All the rentals are smaller and cost more than what we have now. Disappointment. We enjoy our family. If we have to pay more, we'll have to move back to the area we originally were... 30 minutes away. Complicated? yes :( You can see how I wasn't seeing the blessings in of all this?
So because we know we're moving within the next month, Joel and I have kind of been in a rush to find a new place. We spent several hours going through the listings of about 10 different rental companies only to find that 2 or 3 might work. Finally giving up, we went to bed. The next night, we drove around looking for signs on places for rent, and then looking them up when we got home. No luck. The next morning I decided that I would start researching foreclosed properties. Joel's parents had talked to us about buying an investment property which we could rent from them. My thought was that foreclosed properties would be inexpensive enough that when it was all said and done, they wouldn't lose money and we could afford it. During my research, I discovered that, HEY, Joel and I might be able to afford to buy. Neither of us had even considered it because we thought it was outside of our budget. That same afternoon, with a list of foreclosures in hand, my mother in law and I drove around looking at the properties. (Most of which we didn't have exact addresses for, just streets, so we went up and down the street looking for the right one) After seeing some of the houses, I decided that this was too complicated to do by myself. I wanted and needed a realtor to be able to go IN them. (Not just window look) I called coldwell banker and got an appointment to meet with someone that day. We went in and believe it or not, we somehow managed to get probably the only native german/austrian realtor in town. He and Joel hit it off and went crazy speaking german and talking about places they lived and liked. Big brownie points for him. He gave us a collection of houses in the price range I had given on the phone earlier that day. WE LIKED THEM. After discussing our ideas of what we wanted, he was able to get us a meeting with someone to talk about whether or not we could actually afford a house. (a loan person, I'm not the best with all the terminology) What we discovered? Yes! We left our meetings with 9 prospective houses in hand. We then turned into nosy peoples who drive to subdivisions and peek in all the windows. :) Our realtor wanted us to get an idea of areas/ houses we liked and didn't like so he suggested doing a drive by. We did just that. After our peeks, we narrowed down the houses we were interested it and went through them the next day with our realtor (Herb). We found one we really liked and put an offer on it. Sadly, multiple offers came in for the same house and we didn't win. Fairly disappointed, we began the search all over again. We wanted to be sure we were getting the house Heavenly Father had in store for us, we were just hoping to do it quickly since we're being evicted. But in our second go around, we found a house we like much much more! We put an offer in and once again, multiple offers. This time however, we won! :) So now we anxiously wait for the house buying process to go through and pray all is done before our eviction date!
So to wrap this all around. Eviction= happy us. Funny right? (also- baby due in 5 days...)
No comments:
Post a Comment