The natural response to receiving a devastating diagnosis that you can never have children is to just burn your life down right? So last post was about how I quit my job and the overwhelming feedback was that you wanted to hear more about how quitting my job lead to us then selling our house and moving.
Ok first things first, we still live in Metro ATL. However, the job I accepted was 45 MILES from our house. Which in Atlanta traffic time is about 1.5 hours each way. I didn’t really mind the commute because I only go into the office per my contract 2-3 days a week and the rest of the time I work remotely. What I did mind was our old house. Friends heed my warning and beware of delayed maintenance when purchasing a home. Fortunate for the new owner of our old home they got new HVAC, new porches, a house that was painted 100% on the interior, painted 2X on the exterior while we owned the home, new garage doors, a new front door, new kitchen appliances, brand new fence, new tile in the bathrooms, and new exterior trim….and more. If I could go back in time and not buy a house it would be this house. This house cost us a FORTUNE in maintenance during the three years we owned it and in February of 2022 the housing market gave us an out. Albeit, not an easy out. We quickly got the home under contract but that b*tch delayed maintenance came back and the first buyer got a super low mortgage appraisal. We took it in stride and used their inspection report and mortgage appraisal to spend EVEN MORE money on our lemon of a house. (While in the back of our minds knowing we really needed the money for our infertility) while watching our savings get smaller and smaller. If you followed me on instagram at the time you know how much I hated that house.
Anyways, we got the house re-listed in April after Easter. My cats took one for the team and went and lived at the vet for two weeks while we showed the house, got it inspected, and got it appraised. We packed up the dogs and went and stayed with my parents. And although this was a colossal PITA we made significantly more money than we would have had we just accepted the initial low appraisal. We then started aggressively looking for a house. Remember this was May 2022 and the real estate market was HOT. Not only was it hot, people were selling actual piles of garbage for over half a million dollars (I mean this literally we saw houses full of garbage). We got super demoralized and then focused on packing our house up, moved our belongings into storage, and said “its been real, its been fun, but it hasn’t been real fun” to that house and moved in with my parents. In the meantime we did a lot of praying and looked at pretty much every house that hit the market and got outbid on a lot of houses. After our last foray into home ownership I wasn’t too keen on throwing a bunch of money at another money pit. I refused to get emotionally invested and to overpay buying any house, and we were turned off by the way realtors were auctioning houses off so we submitted our best, fair bids and that was that.
By divine intervention we looked at the house we purchased the week interest rates started creeping up. We went nuts and threw 4 offers on 4 different houses. We actually thought we had a 0% chance of getting our current home but still put an offer in anyways because it is less than 2 miles from our Parish and just in a great location in general. Our bids won for two of the houses we offered on (and I know it is different state to state but here in GA you do not have a financial penalty if you offer on a house an then do not move forward with a sale. I know this sounds crazy to people who don’t live in GA but it is nice when you can’t find a house in a hot market and can literally just throw an offer at anything). One of the houses had great potential but ALSO had the potential to become another money pit. There weren’t any red flags on the inspection for our current home so we moved forward with the sale. It only takes me about 40 minutes to get to and from work, and the “reno” needed prior to us moving into the home was all cosmetic . We closed in July and moved in mid-August. It was a PITA to move twice and also cost a small fortune just in moving (and in replacing all the items our crap movers broke) but I am literally so happy to have survived owning the money pit and to have gotten out before higher interest rates trapped us there. As of January 2023 we are still working on unpacking. I wish I could tell you I waved a magic wand and got my house to look instagram ready immediately after moving in, but with me working in manufacturing our house is still only about 75% unpacked. We still need to hang items on the walls and make it feel like home.
2022 was truly the year of change for us.
