Buying a House

I thought it would be fun to share our experience as we found a house to buy and maybe give some tips for those looking to buy a house or sell their own.

So first off we know we wanted to live close to Anthon's work so his commute wouldn't be very far so we decided we didn't want to live in Orem or Provo because that was too far. We also knew that we didn't want to live any farther north than Lehi.

Anthon and I drove up to Utah the last weekend in January and we must have looked at a dozen houses while I was there for the weekend. We liked a few things but one specific. The only problem is that we needed to sell our house in AZ before we could buy a house in Utah. Our house wasn't quite ready to be listed yet so we wanted to lease until we could buy. The people we talked to about that had some pretty intense requests to make that possible on the house we wanted to buy so we turned their offer down. The house was in Lehi at about 500 W and Pioneer Crossing. We ended up finding a house for rent in the same neighborhood and were able to convince the landlord to rent to us if we paid a little extra rent and a pet deposit.

We loved the house we rented and it helped us decide what we really wanted in a house. We moved in over Valentine's Day weekend. As we looked at most houses we realized that most people were not interested in leasing before people buy.

We had the most amazing realtor named Jason Wolf. Our experience with buying a house couldn't have been made any easier for us. He helped us understand everything and fought for what we wanted. I truly felt like he knew us and what we wanted in a house.

We eventually found a house we liked in Lehi. We got under contract and I had my dad come look at it because I had some concern about the crawl space. We ended up finding too much moisture for my comfort in the crawl space and a little bit of standing water. The most awkward part about when I took my dad to look at the crawl space is that the home owner was there looking over our shoulder the whole time. We ended up breaking our contract and we continued looking. This is when we decided that Lehi was maybe not the place for us to live.

Then we started focusing more on Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. We originally thought this would be too far from Anthon's work but once we got to know the area it ended up being about the same distance as our rental house. We looked at a few house out in Eagle Mountain City Center but we realized there was really no stores or anything out there so we thought it was too far for us.

We decided that we were interested in having a basement (finished or unfinished) and that the house needed to be at least 2400 sq ft. Whatever house we built we wanted to make sure we could be in it long term. We wanted at least 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. We prefered to have a decent sized fenced yard but not having it fenced wasn't a deal breaker. We also wanted to have a living room and family room and one thing kind of important to me as silly as it seems is I didn't want a white kitchen sink. I feel like white kitchen sinks never look clean no matter what I do.

We looked at so many houses over the time we were looking that its unbelievable. We learned that once we felt uncomfortable about something in a house then we might as well just move on. We also learned to rate our houses in an order so often our realtor would ask us, do you like this house better than your number one or something similar to us. The realtor would also print out the house sheet for us and after we looked or during we would take notes of the things we really liked and the things we didn't like. Then we put it in order of what we like most to what we liked least.

Let me share a few experiences of some houses we looked at. One house we looked at was a rental house. After knocking on the door it was answered and we were immediately greeted by the smell of weed. Apparently the landlord or tenant didn't remember we were coming and were a little busy. The house was pretty darkly painted with not too many lights on. I swear the smell was strong enough to get a contact high.

We also looked at a couple house that were incredible messy. Once again these were houses that were being rented. One couple was in the process of packing and moving so that's more understandable. We didn't really like the floor plan. The other really messy one was just terrible. I guess they didn't know we were coming but the house was in poor condition. It was pretty crazy.

I remember looking at a house owned by an oriental couple and it was really interesting to look at the décor that was in the house compared to what we are used to seeing.

We looked at a really creepy house once. They were smokers which of course I didn't like and then I don't think they spent much time cleaning up for us. The creepy thing was when we entered the basement though. There was a random bed in an area and it looked like some not great things were going on. It made me really uncomfortable and we pretty much left immediately after that. We stopped looking in that area after that.

We looked at several house located in the same neighborhood as our rental house that we really liked but none of them were quite big enough for us. Some of them had some great features though.

We also looked at a few properties/houses that were fixer uppers located on an acre of land. The first one we looked at needed about $40k of work and was in terrible shape as in not livable but the land was awesome and had animal rights. It was close to the highway though. The other one we looked at was close to that one but much bigger and it was amazing. We liked it a lot but we weren't sure it would pass the inspection and the owners didn't seem interested in fixing those things that were problems. We also learned that several of the neighbors were polygamists which wasn't the best for the kids to grow up around.

We worked with a great company to get a mortgage. The are called Guaranteed Rate. I can't even explain how easy they made the process and how well they communicated with us. Compared to the first time we bought a house, it was all a piece of cake.

I can't really think about what else to write and this is already a long post. I just know working with the right people makes things so much easier and less stressful. I've heard stories from several people about working with a bad realtor and etc. so we were really happy to find such great people to help us.