I Own Two Houses!

Well, Mr. GT and I are now the proud owners of two houses!

We've lived in our current house for 17 years. When we bought it, it was an absolute steal by today's prices. The subdivision across the street was still a farm with cows on it. The housing market hadn't ballooned in our area. We got an old farmhouse-type home on 2.5 acres in town and a creek to boot! The value has about tripled since then.

Even so, everything else we've ever looked at in those 17 years (and we've looked A LOT!)has been JUUUUUUUST out of our reach, price-wise. We live on one income and we're frugal. Mr. GT wasn't willing to carry a mortgage that would put us under if we missed a month's payment.

So we waited on his dream of being out in the country for real. We looked and we looked and we waited. Every so often, we'd get on a moving kick and go looking at houses and would find one and put an offer on it.

Five times we put in offers. Four times they didn't work out.

In the meantime, we lived life and paid off our mortgage. We paid off four cars. We added five children to our family. We put an addition on our 1100 sq. ft. little farmhouse and almost doubled the size.

We bought a piece of land out in the country on which to build. A hair too far from our community. In a different school district. Mr. GT loved it and I pretended to.

And we waited.

While we waited, a house not far from us, the prettiest little farm, came on the market. For just a hair more than we could afford. Five or six years later, it was for sale again. Now we could afford what it had been the first time, but the price had increase, of course, and again it was out of reach.

We put an offer on a different house, a really great deal! The next day, our dream farm was up for sale again and this time we could have made it work. Except for the house we had just "bought."

For all sorts of reasons, we ended up pulling out of the contract (don't do this!) on the great-deal house. Shell-shocked, we swore we were staying put forever.

Fast forward six months and no one has purchased the dream farm. The sellers are getting desperate, the market is failing, and fall was fast approaching. They dropped the price.

The house on the dream farm was 500 sq. ft smaller than our current house. It's in the wrong school district by about 1/2 a mile. There were lots of things that could be wrong about moving there. On a whim, Mr. GT decided we should go look at the house (we'd never been inside or looked at the property).

And he fell in love.

Long story short, it fit my criteria for being accessible to our community and the nearest large city. The house was an old farm house. It has a walk-up attic (oh, I've always wanted one!) The land was open and copious. There's room for animals and a workshop and a garden and fruit trees. There's a tire swing and a barn with secret rooms and a chicken coop.

So once again we put in an offer. And we waited.

We sold our land for a profit to a lovely couple from Chicago (Bill and Dave). They plan to retire there.

Our offer was accepted, our closing date came and went. The current owners graciously extended the closing date. There was a steady parade of viewers through our current house, but no offers. Mr. GT began to panic at the thought of holding two houses, but we we stuck it out and again our closing date approached.

This time, we kept the appointment, we signed the papers, we paid the check and the old owners took off in their RV to work on Habitat for Humanity projects.

We own two houses!