The Tale of Two Houses

I have some exciting news to share with you guys!

As of 3:24pm today…we are officially under contract (!!) to buy a beautiful, renovated home in Eastown aaaand we are under contract to sell our home here in Ottawa Hills. If you aren’t from Grand Rapids, these are two southeast Grand Rapids neighborhoods that are super close to one another…so we aren’t moving far away.

As many of you know, we already tried to sell our house during the month of September. We had our house on the market for about a month and got tons of great feedback and a lot of showings…but zero offers. We ended up losing the house we had a contingent offer on and decided to can the whole selling idea.

Then, a few weeks after “settling back in” to our home, we saw that the house we had our sights set on came back on the market at an even lower price point. It got us thinking about trying to sell our home again, but we tried to resist…

We didn’t want to deal with the craziness of getting our home meticulously ready for showings again. I keep saying that old adage to Nick that cleaning and prepping for showings with little kids is like “trying to shovel snow during a snow storm.” It’s almost impossible. We were reticent to list our home again, but back into the fray we went. <<keep reading to see pictures of our current home at the bottom of this post>>

We listed our house on Tuesday afternoon and received a showing request for Wednesday evening, then another for Friday morning. We kept waiting to hear feedback from the Wednesday showing and we were worried they might not have even come because the realtor didn’t leave their card (and they always leave a business card). But, then at 7:19 on Friday morning we got feedback and some questions from their realtor. One of the questions was about occupancy after closing, so we realized whoever looked at our home on Wednesday had to be at least somewhat interested.

I started texting many of our family and close friends asking them to pray with us boldly that God would grant us favor in the home buying/selling situation. Specifically, we were praying that we would receive an offer on our house. (Note: I definitely believe that God is good whether we hear a “yes,” “no,” or “not yet” answer to our prayers. Sometimes God’s plans for us differ from our own, but I definitely believe we can boldly bring our heart’s desires to God. Then, our job is to simply trust and wait.)

Well, we didn’t have to wait very long this go around…

At 10:11am I texted this to our amazing realtor Andrea Davis: “I have about 20 people praying the offer is accepted and we get an offer on our home ASAP. That may not be part of most realtor strategies ;-) but we’ll see what happens!”

Then, at 10:41am I heard from Nick that we had an offer on our house! I was elated!!!

The offer was lower than we wanted to accept, but we also put a lower offer on the home we wanted to buy so it made sense to us. We went back and forth countering offers on both sides pretty much all day on Friday.

By the end of Friday night, Nick said to me with some defeat in his voice, “I think we are going to lose both offers…” I was more optimistic than he was, but went to bed last night definitely holding my breath.

This morning and early afternoon was filled with a bit more negotiations and paperwork, but by 3:24pm our selling agent, Jessica Tucker, sent us a text that said, “Officially under contract!! They signed.”

We (the boys included) all did a happy dance. The house we are moving to is right across the street from a park and we spent the morning playing there with the boys. They are SO excited to move to the house “near the park” and we are thrilled to have a home with a big front porch, a bit more space and a brand new kitchen and bathrooms.

This week will be the inspection period for both homes, so we will continue to pray for a smooth process and that we can be in the Logan house by late November. We have some exciting projects planned for the house and I can’t wait to share them with you all…

#LifeOnLogan here we come!

P.S. For anyone interested, there are some pictures of our current home below, taken by The Tucker Team Real Estate group. (And seriously if you’re looking for a realtor in West Michigan, I would highly recommend Andrea Davis and Jessica Tucker. They have been incredible to work with!)