Our New Home

Most of you have probably already seen this on Facebook, but on my birthday we bought a new house. It is in escrow now, we close on or before April 23. It is in Fresno, but not in our same ward. It started with Ben looking at other places to rent. We could stay in our 2 bedroom apartment a while longer because our baby will be in our bedroom at first, but with the tax credit and his loans in deferrment (which turned out not to make a difference) and prices pretty low we decided now was a good time to buy. We got a pretty good deal on this house. It was priced above what we were looking for and there were smaller houses available in the nearby development that were what we were looking at. They were about 1000 sq ft smaller and had smaller lots. We could have made do with those. But Ben fell in love with this one. It is 2442 sq ft and is situated on a 13,000 sq ft lot, positioned so that the front yard is small and most of the space is in your back yard. It is a 3 bedroom, but they agreed to put the fourth bedroom in- counter offering only 2,000 more than the offer we gave them (which was about $50,000 less than their asking price.) They also agreed to pay our closing costs and buy down our interest rate if we went with their lender. So instead of a 5.2 percent we are locked in at 4.375 percent on a 30 year fixed loan. I was nervous about it and didn't sleep well the night before we signed our agreement because it really is more home than we need right now and still more than I was planning to spend. I knew there are other houses out there- forclosures and short sales and fixer-uppers that you could get for less. But then they would take longer to close and sometimes not accept your offers and you would have to spend to fix them up and have things go wrong on them sooner. It's kind of funny Ben wasn't wanting to look at new homes before we stopped by there. But he was impressed by the good deal they were able to give us. They only had 2 homes left in that area and are not building more (besides the homes across the street from us that are already sold) so they are just trying to get rid of them basically. The agent told her manager that we needed that 4th bedroom or we wouldn't buy the home. We had all 3 boys with us and she knew we are expecting our fourth (she has 3 herself) and I think that influenced her to do what she could for us. One of the reasons I was nervous about buying was that I felt like I was being pressured when they said how it wasn't going to last because other buyers were looking at it and they would not be able to give us the same interest rate if we waited. Anyway it took talking to my sister Amy who has been looking at houses for months to get me excited about it. She was excited about the interest rate and the lot size and let me know it was a good deal. Ben is probably glad I talked with her and my mother because I was totally set against it- I like more time to make decisions.

Here are some pictures of our home. They didn't come up in the order I wanted, and I'm having a hard time moving them around, so this will have to do.

This is our site plan, showing our property. The top shows the sidewalk behind our house and the wall around it. We have wood fences on the sides.

This shows how our living room will be turned into a 4th bedroom, sharing a bathroom with the 3rd bedroom. It's backward because our house mirrors the floor plan they show you.

This is our floor plan. It should help clarify where the different rooms are that will be in the next pictures.

This is our master bedroom, from the doorway.

This decorative round area opens to the entry, the hallway to our room, and the family room. For some reason Ben didn't want to look at the camera for any pictures. Our beautiful kitchen

This is a view of our backyard from the sliding glass door in the nook.
This is the entry. That first arch is the room where the bedroom will go.

Our front yard. Our home. By the way, it's no longer available.