We’re Home Owners!
We signed our name or initials about 500 times this morning and were handed the keys to the townhouse at 3418 West Street in Ames…making us officially home owners. The next step is to pick paint colors for the various rooms! I’m so excited about finally being able to paint rooms any color we chose, instead of the boring off-white/cream color of rental properties in Ames.
The previous residents of the place (three ISU football players) left a bunch of random stuff in the place. Our realtors said that isn’t the way it’s supposed to go, but it definitely wasn’t the worst they had seen. Some of the stuff was kind of gross, like a bath towel draped over a railing and some food in the fridge…but other stuff is actually kind of cool, like a nice desk, a bookcase and a garbage can.
I’m really excited about the ministry opportunities we will have with this new house due to the extra space. I’m also really thankful for some of the little blessings God has provided along the way during this purchase process. One of the few things we didn’t like about this place was the fact there was no street parking on our block. Visitors would have needed to park down the street or around the corner. Since the time we signed the purchase agreement, they re-did the parking regulations on the street, and signs are up stating there is the typical campustown alternating sides on various days parking scheme.
Financially, things worked out better than expected. We had put down a sizeable amount of earnest money (kind of like a down payment, but it goes toward closing costs first — it shows you are serious about buying a house). I had originally thought we would either come out even at closing or have to pay a little bit more. As it turns out since the sellers are paying a big part of the closing costs and the costs weren’t as high as I thought they would be, we are getting over $600 of our earnest money back — very useful considering we have medical bills to pay from having a baby and will have other expenses associated with moving and buying a house (stuff like cleaning the carpet in our old place, buying curtains and paint for the new house, etc). And one final small blessing today — the realtors weren’t pleased with the condition in which the previous owners and residents left the carpet, and so they arranged for the carpets to be professionally cleaned today at no charge to us! That’s one less thing for us to worry about.
Once we get moved in, we’ll have everyone over for a big party. Meanwhile, drop us a line or give us a call if you would like to help with painting, packing or carrying heavy boxes. 