When Brien first mentioned there was a job opening in Pendleton, Oregon I quickly went on-line and started looking at houses. It's just what I did whenever he mentioned a job opening. I would look on realtor.com and by looking at the houses in our hypothetical price range we would decide if we were willing to apply for a job and move to a town. Pendleton passed the initial review. Although Pendleton is smaller and has fewer conveniences than the greater Elko area, a short 1 hour 15 minute drive on a 4 lane divided highway leads us to a temple, Costco, and Target. (Anyone who has driven the two-lane highway between Wells, NV and Twin Falls, ID on a busy day can understand the appeal of a major highway.) Those really were the three things we looked up along with looking at the housing situation.
In the summer of 2018 there was a house on the market that really appeal to me, and I thought it might be a great home for our family, but the price and the current interest rates put the home out of our price range. We wanted to purchase a home when we moved here, but in the end decided renting for a little while would be the best option. We are so happy we rented!
Fast forward to November 2019, the appealing house comes back on the market. I felt a little disappointed because we still needed to save a few more months for our down payment. Also, even as we saved more it seemed mortgage payment would be higher than we wanted. We knew our budget and were determined to stick with it.
During the end of February 2020 and the craziness of Girl Scout cookie sales Brien decided to start our pre-approval process. We still wanted to save a little more money, but decided it couldn't hurt to get ready and start looking as things popped up.There was a foreclosure a few houses away from us and the price had dropped, so we would have been able to easily afford it and have plenty of money left over for the repairs it needed. The neighborhood foreclosure went under contract before we could look at it, but we didn't mind too much. Overall it felt like the Pendleton housing market moved kind of slow, so we wanted to see in person what was available. We stopped in on open houses and after our pre-approval we scheduled a few showings with our awesome realtor. In October of 2018 Molly had helped us on our house hunting trip. We felt awful that we offered on a house and then decided we needed to walk away from the counter offer and negotiations. We really enjoyed working with her, and decided we would go back to her when we were ready to buy.
The awesome old home was now a pending sale, this had actually happened a couple times since it was listed. It was now in our budget, and I felt like we had just barely missed a great opportunity. I had told Molly about the house, but we didn't bother to look since there was already an accepted offer on the home. We looked at a few houses and were taking our time, considering if something could work for us.
I knew Brien would love an old house, and this was one that had been pretty well taken care of. I loved the potential I could see in the pictures. I needed to see it in person. It felt a little serendipitous, the house I was so drawn to was once again available. When we walked inside I felt more concerns than I expected. We knew it had been vacant or a little while (found out later it was at about 18
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| The incredible rock foundation. It's not creepy in real life. |
months). I was concerned about lots of smaller repairs that were jumping out at me and wondered if there were bigger problems with the home and that's why the other offers hadn't progressed. Brien felt so excited about this old house, it was built in 1900. It seemed solid. It has 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a huge living room. We loved the square footage and the neighborhood has some wonderful, historic homes.
We wanted to make sure the girls would feel okay about moving to a different neighborhood, Poppy would be changing elementary schools. (Kindergarten is at its own school and the three elementary schools are 1-5. There is one middle school and one high school in Pendleton.) School had just been canceled for a couple weeks, so so the following Monday, March 16th we took the girls to see the house and let them know what would change with moving to a different neighborhood.
We decided to put in an offer, if we could come to an agreement then a home inspection could hopefully answer any questions. COVID-19 made the interest rates fluctuate for a few days, and we felt uncertain about how that would affect our mortgage, so we let the counter offer expire. A friend shared an old photo on Facebook and I realized it was in the same house we wanted to by. I had noticed two names left on a door and wall in the home. It was nagging at my brain that I should know who this family was. I'm not a good detective. I was able to message my friend and ask her about the house. They loved living there and she said everything was working fine when they moved out. A few days later the interest rates had settled, so one week after our first offer we put in a new offer. After talking with my friend we felt more confident about the house, and were interested in what the home inspector would find.
We went under contract on March 27 and will be closing on April 27. It is closing a few weeks quicker than the realistic expectation when the offer was accepted.
We are excited, and also a little nervous. There is so much that needs to be painted, so much to paint, and so much more to paint and refinish in our overall plan. I love to share home projects, so I plan to share pictures of what we do to make the house feel like a home for us. We found out the style is called (American) foursquare. It was the popular house 1890-1920. This seems to have a simpler feel inside, there are some that have a craftsman feel, with lots of wood. We don't think anything like that is hiding under the sheet rock. We don't plan to restore it, but just to make improvements to make it feel like a better home for us.
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