home owners

Eric and I bought a condo in Kirkland and moved in Aug 1st! It's a 2 bed/ 2 bath and bigger than our last apartment, so that is definitely an upgrade, but it was a long and painful road to ownership and here's the short version of the story.....
We didn't know it at the time, but the condo we were interested in (and now own) was a short-sale, or about to be in foreclosure. I had seen the property listed a few months earlier, but at a much higher price, and since they had just dropped the price dramatically we decided to check it out. It was pretty dirty and didn't show well but it had a lot of potential, so we decided to make an offer and just see what would happen. We though the offer was good, but then learned that the property was pending foreclosure and that we would be negotiating with a mortgage company and not the personal owner (who apparently was now in China and would not be returning to the US anytime soon). So the mortgage company sent back a counter offer that was actually higher than their listed asking price! Can you believe that? Needless to say, we were shocked and angry, but decided to stick it out and see if they would just accept asking price and leave it at that. While we waited to hear back from the mortgage company we had the inspection done and everything looked ok. We waited for about 3 more weeks and began to panic a little because our apartment lease was up on July 31st and we had not thought about a plan B of where we would live if this didn't close in time. A few days before we were to be homeless, we got word that the mortgage company had agreed to our terms and all we needed to do was sign the loan paperwork and close a couple days later! Well, it turns out that the mortgage company and the escrow company messed up the figures, so even though we had signed all the papers we were not going to be able to close on time and we were most definitely going to be homeless in a few days. We had to move all of our stuff into storage and get ready to live with relatives or in a hotel for a few days, or weeks. Then, all of a sudden, one day before our lease was up, I got a call from our realtor and she said that we had closed and could come get the keys asap! We were finally homeowners! So we moved in that night, got our stuff out of storage a few days later, and now we have a permanent residence!

There are a lot more agonizing details, but I'm sure no one wants to hear them, bottom line is...we are homeowners!