Sold our house. Brought a house.

On Sunday morning as I scrubbed the house raw for the 9th time in 3 months preparing it to be on show for yet another open home I told myself that this would be the last time. The feedback we were getting was that we were asking too much, that the third bedroom was in a weird place and that it really needed 2 bathrooms.

It was hard for me not to take the criticism personally- this house after living in it for 9 years does feel like an extension of me.  Was it worth what we were asking? We thought so, pitching just under it's government valuation. Was the third bedroom in a weird place off the dinning room? Well now that I think about it, it is but in all honestly this had never crossed our minds. It is what it is, an add on to what was originally a 2 bedroom house.  Does it need 2 bathrooms? Yes if you have 5 people living here, no if it is just two.  I just wanted someone to fall in love with this place like we had, and if nobody did then I didn't want to sell.  In fact on Sunday I was ready to take it off the market and do my best to convince Marcus to use our savings to add on to this place rather than move on.  That was Sunday.

On Monday I got a call from the agent saying that a young couple who had been to 3 of our open homes were ready to put in an offer. He wasn't sure if it was going to be in the ball park but it was great to get an offer. I agreed and instantly liked this 'young couple' who had fallen in love with our house.

They put in an offer below our asking price. We countersigned at our asking price and they signed. And just like that our very first house was sold.

Marcus did a little jig when the Sold sticker went up on the signs out the front. I on the other hand did a little sob, followed by a loud sob and then there were just tears and snot and giant sobs because I was all a jumble of emotions.  I felt relief that we didn't have to do one more open home, I was excited about where to next, a little scared about where to next, guilty about leaving our amazing neighbours and separating our dog Sam from his best mate next door,  sadness that I wouldn't be around to do the car pooling with my friend down the road when her daughter starts at Lucy's school next year. Frustrated that I wouldn't be able to see how the trees that we planted along our new fence will look in all their glory come spring. Relief, excitement, fear, guilt, sadness, frustration- those are a lot of emotions to hold all at once.  Men are so simple, Marcus didn't feel any of those, just excitement.

Because settlement was in 4 short weeks, Marcus and I needed to make some decisions about where we were going to go. The plan was always to rent for a bit, to free us up to make decisions work wise for Marcus without feeling trapped by a house.  To rent so that if needed we could up and move at the drop of a hat.  When moving house suddenly became the reality we realised that we didn't want to leave Hawkes Bay to chase work. Marcus has been very fortunate in that there have been a number of job offers locally for him to choose from and we absolutely love Lucy's school and Oliver's kindergarten not to mention our wonderful church, family and friends. So once we made the decision to stay local,  unless we were going to build somewhere renting didn't make much sense anymore.  Interest rates were low and we worked out we could possibly buy something and pay less on the mortgage than we would renting.

We spent a few evenings browsing real estate websites and seeing what was out there.  A 5 bedroom place caught our eye, mainly because it was on the same street that Marcus's parents live on. Marcus loves this area of Havelock North because it was where he spent his childhood. He loves the idea of Ollie and Nate, building forts and huts in the same reserve that he did as a kid. We went for a viewing and both really felt that it would fit our family perfectly. It had a good layout and nice sized back garden and most of all was low maintenance which is what we both wanted in our next house.  Something we could live in easily without looking around at it and all the things we needed to do. We looked at one other house just to compare apples with apples and because we thought  it couldn't be that easy, that we would seriously buy the first house that we look at. But we couldn't get it out of our heads.  It was listed above our price range so we offered what we thought a cheeky price (our top dollar) and tried our luck. To our surprise they accepted and the ball got rolling on building checks, finance approval, and council checks. We will know on Thursday if it is ours or not.

So that is has been our week. Our crazy emotion packed week. Marcus put fairy lights up tonight just to focus us back on Christmas, it seems to have taken a back seat in all of this and with only 7 sleeps to go, we want to make sure our last Christmas in this house is one we'll remember with fond memories.