Buying a house!

Exciting news:  Kenny and I just bought a house!  We rented for our first three years in Virginia Beach, and we are both very excited about 1) owning rather than renting and 2) the particular house we bought.  I am also pretty excited that our new zip code is the easy to remember, numerically ordered 23456.  Here are some observations from our recent bout of home shopping (listed in - my favorite - bullet points):

• HGTV effect:  You could really see the influence of shows like House Hunters in people's choices about how to upgrade their homes.  We saw many, many homes with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances where there were glaringly obvious other things that should have been fixed first (like paint the walls, change the carpet, etc.).  And I am not immune to this effect...I would see a house that needed a new roof or something major, but my thoughts would linger on the granite countertops.
• On a related note -- it's so easy to start wishing you were shopping for a fancier house, no matter how high your actual price point is.  This blog post, one of my favorites by anyone ever, is a helpful anecdote to that.  
• Advice to sellers:  If there are easy things to repair or clean up, it is well worth the time to do so before putting your house on the market.  If buyers like the house overall but see things like a weird wire coming out of the wall, or an unflushed toilet, or a hole punched in a closet door (all real examples we saw in the last couple months), it makes you wonder what other problems or dirtiness you're not seeing and casts a bad light on the whole house.  
• Home buying to home owning is like this throwback blog post:  You spend 10-15 minutes previewing a place, and have to decide based on that brief glimpse whether you should make a major financial commitment to it and make it the space where you will live, possibly for decades.  You have no idea in this quick viewing what you will most love and hate about the house.  
• The process can be an emotional rollercoaster:  Getting through offer, counteroffer, home inspection, and closing is a surprisingly nerve-wracking experience.  You have to try to guess the right market price, which is sometimes very close to the list price and sometimes tens of thousands of dollars off.  You have to guess whether the seller is eager to sell quickly and willing to take an aggressive offer or whether they feel like their property is worth the asking price and will be offended and walk away if you make an offer that's too aggressive.  You have to hope that things go well with the home inspection.  And through that process, you have to be ready for the possibility that buying this house will not work out, right when you're most eager to be excited about moving in.  That's why it's so exciting to get to closing day!

We closed on our new house today and we are moving in this weekend.  For those who live in Hampton Roads, we are moving to the Salem area of Virginia Beach, which is pretty close to where we live now.  Unfortunately, Joshua will have to switch to a new preschool as part of the move.  We've heard good things about the new school, but would love prayers for the transition.  Time to go pack some boxes!