Home Hunting Part 2

God can work miracles. I believe this with my whole heart. I believe that He has the capacity to CURE me from Lyme Disease, but I believe that is not in the plans just yet. God has a plan for all of us and for me it to educate others on the devastating effects of Lyme Disease and give Him the glory.

This isn't about Lyme though. This is about the story of house hunting and how it all works out in God's time. So my husband and I had been talking about refinancing our house, but I kept putting it off. Then he put it in terms I could understand. By refinancing the house, we would save $300 bucks a month. That is a couple of IV treatments or a few HBOT therapies, etc. So we began to put the refinance in motion. Things went through and on Friday March 23rd, we signed the documents to refinance the house.

Now the next morning on the 24th, we woke up and something convinced us to look at a home close to our work. So we drove 45 minutes to this house and went in. I wasn't thrilled about it, but it was pretty. I really liked the "Loft" area of the house, but nothing to write home about (no pun intended). That night, it was really noisy in our neighborhood so we drove around to neighboring neighborhoods and drove down one subdivision. I saw a house that had an open house sign on it, but the house was locked up. We decided just for the fun of it we would go back the next day when it would be opened.

On March 25th (Sunday), we walked into this house and I kid you not I felt like I was at home. In fact I joked with another family that was there when they walked in, "Come on in to our home." Yes, I jested, but who knew that it really would happen? God did. The relator had to take that family down the street to open up another home so we had a good 20 minutes in the home to ourselves. I oohed and aahed over every little thing. She returned and we talked to about the home. We walked down to the other house and when we walked in that family said, "Come on into to our home." We laughed and looked around.

We took a second look at the first home and then came home. I couldn't stop thinking about the house. We thought at the very least we could look to see whether there were other lots available knowing that this house would probably be bought pretty quickly since it was only one of three left and only one of two that was move in ready. Keep in mind that this all happened less than 48 hours after refinancing the first house.

We came home and talked about it. We drove by the house again and again. We were listening for neighbor noise. There was none. It was miraculous. The next weekend, we popped in on a Saturday. We looked around and took a couple of pictures. We came back the next day with a check for earnest money. This happened on Sunday April 1st. This was all happening very quickly. In that short week, we had talked to two financial gurus. One that had worked with us on our refinance and the guy that the relator had recommended. Well our guy said he thought it would be best to wait until July. The other guy said he would do it as quickly as we wanted, but there was only so fast that we could go because of all the requirements of the lenders.

So from April 1st to April 4th, a lot of things went wrong. First we were told we had to have a certain amount for down payment and a certain amount set aside for both mortgages. This amount was astronomical, but we knew we would have it by a certain date. Then on April 3rd, we got an email that stopped us in our tracks. Now instead of having to have an astronomical amount in our bank we had to have triple that. Instead of having two months of both mortgages in our account, we had to have SIX months of mortgage. Any normal person would have said, "Forget it." They would have given up.

But not us. We kept at it so in 24 hours, we came up with a way and our meeting was set for April 4th. We were given until the 10th to get everything together and he would send it to the underwriters on April 11th. We were told that the first time our stuff went to the lenders that the underwriters would probably deny our request and that we would just resubmit everything in another month. We were also told there would be a huge list of demands. Instead of worrying, I prayed.

April 11th, the man sent our stuff off. We waited and then, we did the unbelievable. We accepted that this was going to happen and began to box up some things in our current home. Things that we don't need to use for the next month. I packed up 12 boxes and my husband packed up nearly the same amount. We went to our house again this past weekend and it felt even more like home. We met our neighbors. This morning we were sent an email. An email that said the underwriters approved our request AND there was only TWO things on the list. Those two things were immediately sent to him and shortly thereafter we got an email saying that we would CLOSE ON OUR NEW HOME MAY 14TH!

Now let me put this out there.

March 23rd - close on refinance

March 24th - look at home in big city near work

March 25th - see dream home in current city

During week of March 25th - contact lenders and find out how they can help.

March 31st - go back to home to see if still have same feeling

April 1st - give earnest money check

April 3rd - email with "bad" news, but we overcome challenge to have our meeting

April 4th - meeting and give paperwork

April 7th - go see house again

April 11th - paperwork is sent to the lenders and underwriters

April 17th - send email to check on status

April 18th - given approval and closure date of May 14th

Now we were told by a really smart financial person that these things don't get approved on the first run. We were also told that there would be a lot of hoops that we wouldn't possibly be over to overcome.

Now granted, we don't have the keys in hand yet, but I am here to tell you that God works miracles.

I can't wait to share pictures. I pray that the rest of the process goes smoothly and nothing kinks up, but I have faith.