Closing Day

Whew.  I'm still not completely believing it, but we closed on our house today.  After too many years of living in DC and paying rent, we signed on the dotted line (about a hundred and twelve times) and are now happy homeowners.  In DC we never took the plunge, mainly because real estate was so ridiculously expensive (over-inflated) and we wanted to live in easy distance of work, so we rented.  For outrageous sums.  Maybe that was a mistake, but I never could have swallowed the prices that homes sell for out there.

So when we decided to make the move home to STL this summer, we started out with the mindset of renting.  Thanks to some wisdom from family, we took the plunge.  During the closing today, we were chatting with our agent about the process.  We made an offer on this house without ever setting foot in it.  Our agent said that in her eight years of selling real estate, this was the first time she's experienced this.  What makes this wonderful is that we LOVE this house.  From the moment I set foot in it, it just felt right...felt like home. 

What made this work was that we had my mom serving as our (very reasonable and unbiased) eyes and ears.  Mom worked with our agent, looked at homes, took pictures and video, and asked a lot of good questions.  When we decided on this house, she was there helping with the inspection and other odds and ends that needed to be taken care of.  Our agent marveled at how neutral she stayed during it all.  But, it worked.  I haven't had a moment of hesitation about the house.  Yes, there are some things I want to do to put our stamp on it, but it already feels like ours.  This is home.  This is where, after years of living in places that were ok for now, we can put down roots.  This is home.