We're A Hot Mess!

I CAN’T BELIEVE WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

I CAN'T BELIEVE WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!

I never thought I would own a house. My entire life I dreamt about being a homeowner, but I didn’t know how to obtain that. My family always rented apartments or townhomes growing up, I actually lived in the same place for almost 20 years, not knowing it wasn’t “ours. “Growing up I thought that people that lived in single family homes were extremely wealthy and that it wasn’t meant to be for me.

Clearly, I was misinformed.

I am also the child of immigrant parents, who fled their countries to come to the land of opportunity. But that’s beside the point.

I started watching HGTV shows and seeing young people with bizarre jobs buying homes. I said to myself, well I can totally do that. So I began doing some research and learned that it is possible and I was being completely ridiculous and oblivious to the world. So I sat down with my significant other and told him my dreams and wishes of owning a house. He said, LET’S DO IT! So I sat down and I did a whole bunch of calculations, spreadsheets and put us on a budget so that we could reach our dreams of owning a home.

Fast forward a few years and we were on our house hunting journey. We spent months looking for homes and going to open houses. But if you’ve ever lived in Miami, you would know that every house has been modified in the worst way possible. I saw closets turned into bathrooms, shed into tiny homes; I even saw an electrical panel behind kitchen cabinets. It was exhausting.

We gave up on our search for a few months; there was nothing worth looking at anymore. But I decided to go onto one of those real estate apps and came across a house that was too good to be true. It was late in the evening, I’m sure our realtor was sleeping, but I sent him the listing anyway. It was a house that was not on the market for another 24 hours, we would be the first people to see it in person if we could get an appointment. Since my realtor was sleeping I decided to email everyone I found tied to the listing and got us four appointments, clearly I had gone crazy or something.

We were the first people to see the house. We fell in love, the house was so nice, there weren’t any closets turned into bathroom, I was in shock! We had other houses we were going to look at that day, but as soon as we reached the next one we told our realtor “nope, we don’t want to see any more houses.” Within the hour we had put in an offer on our dream house.

Fast forward through the heart palpitations and nervous cocktails and we got ourselves a house. We still had no clue what we were doing and everything was moving so fast. Finally when we got our keys and get inside our new house we realized how much furniture hides imperfections. Needless to say our dream home had a lot of updating it needed in order for us to move in.

And that my friend is where our journey in homeownership begins.