The Parallels of buying your first home, and planning a wedding……Who knew??

We are so excited to venture into the blissfulness of buying our first home together and having our VERY OWN driveway! To back up a little, our townhouse was on the market approx 3 months, when a fabulously-amped couple expecting their first baby put in an offer. They accepted our minor counter offer and everything runs smooth! We close escrow tomorrow Friday. I’ve got to say, I hate the packing….and geez who knew that we had so much JUNK? I literally felt like I was digging sand. Now, is Selling your home easy? HECK NO! Besides the ridiculous amount of paperwork you need to sign, there are agents & inspectors who shouldn’t be in the business because they are either leaving lights on or leaving doors unlocked after showing your home, or prying and pulling at your possessions and lying about it. Yep! Washing Machine happened to stop working the day the home inspector comes to our place. I get the guy on the phone after finding that my water won't drain and he adamantly denies moving anything. LOW and BEHOLD, the report comes back and there are pictures of my laundry room drains exposed with the washer and dryer PULLED out from the wall? Nice Lie. Didn’t you know that I would see these pictures....and how hard it is to plug my stuff back in?! Thank god I hired professional people to help us buy and sell because it has reduced my stress level tenfold.

So, part 2: Is BUYING a home easy? NOPE. Especially if you and your spouse have 2 completely different opinions on what’s important. I wanted a good size kitchen, ample family space, and a master bathroom. He wanted RV parking and a long driveway. Yep, that’s all….Parking. Aren’t men simple creatures? If the house was perfect in every way but didn’t have RV parking, Donny wasn’t interested. I was at my wits end after week 3 of house hunting. There is not one thing we’ve agreed on yet! Isn’t this supposed to be fun?? And don't get me started on So. Cals inflated real estate market! You can watch HGTV's House Hunters and see a couple in another state roll into a 2500sq foot house for 1/4 what it costs here. So fast forward to Saturday Feb 17th. We come across a FABULOUS home on a cul-de-sac. Curb appeal, RV parking, great neighborhood and has family written all over it! It looked over our price range, but after seeing the flyer, IT WASN’T. Did they under price this one? (**heck ya they did). We walk inside and it doesn’t take us 2 minutes before we find each other in the hallway and say “This is THE ONE, let’s do it”. What? Are we agreeing on a house? AWESOME!!! We make nicey-nice with the owners, who happen to be the Senior Cleavers! Great couple who have lived there over 20 years. The owner really took a liking to Donny and showed him every little hose, sprinkler, and plug he installed. We were on cloud nine! We race to our friends mortgage office and get the full price offer in. Then we wait…and wait….and wait. They have 3 days to get back to us and Donny and I are ready to throw up with anticipation. The offer expires Tuesday at Midnight and here it is 5:00pm on Tuesday and nothing. THEN, I get a call at 5:30 that they accepted our offer. HORAY!! They had 2 other offers come in EXACTLY as ours but they chose us! It’s a done deal and we move in at the end of March!

So here are my stress free lessons that can apply to both planning your wedding and buying your first home together!

1. Take your time on finding a home. It’s like buying your wedding dress…or even picking the right guy/gal........You just KNOW when you find “THE ONE” and trust me, you’ll lose sleep over it just like we did.


2. If and when you find “THE ONE” make sure you get oober personal with the sellers. The reason they chose us was because of our excitement for their home. We gushed over it and told them our story, met them in person, and by these encounters alone they knew we were the perfect couple to take over their spread. Vendors and Reception sites should be the same way. You just know when it fits.


3. Don’t let the little things stress you out. Sure, the inspector screwed with my washer & our buyers waited until the last minute to ask for repairs (I’m still peeved) but I'll get over it. There are a billion other tiny little things that will test your patience. Pick your battles.
   
4. Make a list of Must haves and COMPROMISE! It’s not just YOUR house or YOUR wedding. You both deserve to be heard.
   
5. Your family WILL have opinions…..well most do. Take them all with a grain of salt. They think they are helping and let them think that. There just might be some VALUABLE information in all that hooplah.......and there will be off the wall questions…....and many of them......just take a deep breath and know that they are happy for this new venture in your life!!


6. Most importantly, HIRE a Professional you TRUST to take care of all the little details. Ask me about wedding planning and I can whip out answers all day long…..but ask me about property tax clauses and LGS reports and I’m out of my league. Thank god I have amazing professionals that KNOW what they are doing and have experience.
   
   LAST BUT NOT LEAST:
   What's in a name? Sure, As we move, we are dropping the beautiful sounding street name "Champagne" to the horrifically disease sounding name "Gloxinia". But hey, I LOVE this new house and with this NEW HOUSE comes a NEW NAME. I can learn to love it. **Gulp**