After a lot of looking, we finally found our new home. A few close offers almost put us in the wrong home, but luckily we were hesitant enough that we couldn’t quite make it through all the paperwork of the first few offers we almost made the mistake of making.
We began looking back in August 2012, more as a fun weekend trip than anything else. We looked at some new town homes just to see what was out there, with no real intention of buying. However, after some quick discussions with the seller’s real estate agent, we realized, “hey, maybe this won’t cost much more than our apartment!”
That led to a ton of weekends of looking at new construction, specifically town homes. We realized if we were going to get a townhouse, we’d end up needing a significantly expensive amount of upgrades, which seemed outrageous. To pre-wire a ceiling fan, not including the fan, was $300. That’s $300 for a $1 wire to go to the ceiling. And they know they can charge it, since it’s more expensive to tear down the ceiling and walls afterwards. The other issue we had with a townhouse was the $150/month HOA fees, that quickly led to us considering how much more we could get if we put that $150/month towards the actual cost of the house.
So we found a realtor, and started looking. And looking. And looking. And looking some more. Many homes in this area, we found, also had HOA’s. It was really annoying, coming from being up north where we’d never heard of an HOA before, let alone considered living in an area governed by one. So we looked in areas that the HOA fees, the fees the homeowner’s association charges you to live in your own house, were lower than the average in this area. We were hoping for under $50/month.
Ashley working in Cary, and me in Durham/Morrisville, we wanted to find a place near both places. We had grown to like Cary a lot, it seemed like it carried a nice neighborhood vibe. So when we started looking, Cary is where we began. We quickly found that many other people found Cary to be a nice place, so the prices were driven up by the demand. We broadened our search to further out places; Holly Springs and Apex. We loved that we could find 2700 square foot homes in Holly Springs for a lower monthly cost than a 1700 square foot home in Cary. But just as we were considering putting an offer in on a home in Holly Springs, we decided that we didn’t like the drive from our jobs to the house.
After giving up on that house, we started to lose steam and feel disheartened about the whole search, especially after finding out Ashley was going to lose hours at work. After a short while, we started looking again, this time moving our search to mainly Durham. Again we could get a larger house in our price range in Durham. And again, we came real close to putting an offer in on a house. Really close. We signed half of the papers, and after seeing the monthly cost, I didn’t feel the house and the area justified what we’d be paying to live there. So we didn’t put in the offer.
Now that it was already April, and we had only found 2 houses that we liked enough to come close to putting an offer in on it, we were starting to think it just wouldn’t be possible to find what we were looking for in our price range. We all but totally stopped looking. I checked updates in my email, but didn’t pay much attention. We had the lease renewal for our apartment, and we were ready to turn it in. But, we started seeing some homes again, and I wasn’t totally sure I wanted to lock us into another year just yet. We found another house we really liked, but by the time we decided we wanted to make a move, it was already pending.
About a week later, a house came on the market in Cary. I saw it but we weren’t really looking heavily, and I didn’t think it looked wonderful, and at that point, I wasn’t showing Ashley anything that I didn’t think would be almost perfect. That weekend, Ashley showed me the same house in Cary that came on the market. I was hesitant, but agreed to ask our realtor to see it.
As we walked through, I think we both knew that this was our first home. Although nothing was perfect, I think it just felt like home. As we walked through, we continued to look at each other, as if to recognize how much we both liked it. The yard, though it had no grass, was much more private and larger than most in the area. And the HOA fees were only $115 a year, or less than $10 a month. Perfect. By the time we left, we already knew we were going to make an offer the next day.
We made the offer on May 20, a week before our 3 year anniversary, and our trip to Williamsburg, VA. Although it felt like forever at the time, it all seems like a blur now. Our inspection turned out pretty well, and the sellers agreed to fix all of the large problems we had and most of the small issues we had. Fast-forward to June 28, and we’re in the attorney’s office signing papers. At 3PM on June 28, we walked into our house for the first time that it was ours. We brought over our mattress, and spend the first night with almost nothing set up, and our mattress on the floor in the living room.
Now, about a week later, we’ve made more progress. Over the past week, we’ve painted the living room, downstairs bedroom (my office), downstairs hallway, and master bedroom. Unfortunately we’ll have to paint just about every room in the house, as the previous owners had much darker tastes as far as color goes, and we prefer much lighter colors. There’s certainly some projects that we’ll have to take on to make this house ours (and I’m excited to take on some projects and talk about them here), but it already feels like home with Ashley, Dexter, and Riley to share it with.
105 Twilight Court, Cary, NC