I BOUGHT A HOUSE!

It's finally finished! I bought a house!

better pictures to come soon, i just snapped this with my phone

It's a little three bedroom, two and a half bath house in a nice neighborhood. Its a small house at 1300sf, and it sits on a lot that is barely bigger than the house. It's a two story house, tile downstairs, and carpet upstairs in the bedrooms. Its in the far Northwest corner of the city. When you drive out to Mt Charleston look out to your left as you leave town going under the Durango overpass-that's where I'll be! I'm just across the street from the park and the pool, so that's pretty nice.

I've been thinking about buying a house for about a year now. I was so close to building one about 6 months ago, but the mortgage, HOA, SID, and other fees added up were just barely on the edge of affordability, so I shelved plans to buy a house.

Then, my friends the Martins, came into some financial hardship. The construction project Joseph was working on finished, and there were no more construction jobs to be found. Lacey had been bugging me to buy her house for a while, but I just kind of shrugged it off. "Yea right, I'm not going to buy your house!"

But as the housing market here continued to slide the prices their neighbor's were selling for went from being kind of affordable, to affordable, to where they are now, where I figured I would be a fool to pass up an opportunity like this.

We've been working on a short sale with their bank since November. My goodness the process has dragged on and on, but the mortgage consultant, Realtor, and title company were all impressed with the speed that the deal has been made.

There was a lot of waiting around for the Martins bank to decide if they would accept the short sale. That took almost 2 months, and then it was my turn to get things taken care of. Tons of emails, phone calls, and signing of papers. At one point I was ready to strangle the loan officer, because I would give her some document, she would tell me that was all she needed from me, and then call the next morning to ask for some other document, over and over again. And the whole time I was afraid that all this would be for nothing.

When I had looked into building a house before I ran into credit trouble; not that my credit was terrible, but that I didn't have any! My truck has been paid off for several years, and the one credit card I had when I moved to Las Vegas had gotten me into enough trouble that I decided I didn't want one anymore. All my payment history had fallen off the books, and I had a 0 credit score. I was afraid at every turn that the bank would call me up and say that they were really sorry, but they couldn't help me out. I'm not worried about the payments. The HOA, mortgage, taxes, all that stuff will be a lot less than what I'm paying now for a single bedroom apartment. isn't that crazy?

Speaking of help though, I need to thank my parents. They had offered quite a while ago to help me with the down payment on a house, and even after all the waiting they were still willing to give me a hand. I really am very lucky that they were able to give me some financial aid, and talk me through the whole process. Every time there was some financial question, my mom had the answer and could tell me what to do. When I started getting worried about things my dad always had an uplifting word. The whole thing has made us closer. I've talked to my parents probably 5 times a week for the last few months. Thanks Mom and Dad!

The last week has been killing me. My bank called to let me know the loan had the final approval. They told me I needed a cashiers check for the title company. the next day I was told they wanted me to wire the money. Arggh! So I went through this huge process at my credit union to work out the wire transfer. They had just started some new policies to avoid wire fraud, and I was the first person any of the tellers had had to do a wire transfer for with the new procedures. Then, because it was late in the day on Friday, they couldn't make the transfer until Monday. The bank wouldn't fund the loan 'till I made the down payment, so I burned up another weekend waiting. I had to pack instead. Yesterday I was waiting all day for the realtor to call and tell me everything was ready and I could come get the keys. You know the story though; a watched pot never boils.

The title company was really cool though. I walked in and they had my name on the plaque: "Welcome Mr. Norton" That was neat, and then they had a leather bound drink menu with about 50 different drinks, and a snack basket so we could have something to eat while we went through mounds of papers. And then It turned out that the title guy was LDS, and was in the same ward as one of the counselors from my bishopric! The whole experience was very good! If you're buying a house you generally get to pick the title company, so give Noble Title a call. They were super nice! The Realtor was also very cool and helpful. Her name is Kelly Albright. If your looking for a realtor I'll give her your name.

There's a lot going on right now. It's kind of weird to own the house that I was a guest in so many times. Things will be really weird when the Martins come over for a visit and my things are in their house!

There is no service of any kind in the house right now, so I spent the afternoon arranging for locksmiths, and water, power and gas. Tomorrow I will be looking at carpet cleaners, and cleaning supplies The bottom three feet of the walls have tiny little hand prints everywhere!

Mostly I'm glad to finally own a house. I'm paying myself to live, not some landlord to let me live. I can play music in the morning while I get ready for work and not worry about waking the neighbors at 3:30 AM. I'm just glad to have something that's mine!

Anyway if you've got questions I haven't answered hit me up in the comments below and I'll try to answer as best as I can (you don't have to register or anything). If your thinking about a visit to Vegas, make sure to call me! I'll have at least one spare bedroom for guests, and I love to have friends and family over! and yes I'm going to throw a big house warming party when I get all settled in-probably the first weekend of April if you want to come.