Nick promised a blog post this week about our big news and now we can finally share it with you all… Nick and I are buying our first house!!! 😀 We’re super excited!

Living & Dining Room

We had been looking at houses online for almost a year, so we got a pretty good feel for how much houses cost in the area. Decent houses in the area start at almost half a million dollars, so a townhouse was a good, more affordable option for us. We also wanted to stay close to UW so he could have a short bus ride to work (parking at UW is expensive, plus we would need to have two cars — right now, one car is all we need).

Three weeks ago, I found a townhouse online that was in our price range and looked pretty much perfect for us. We had Dad (a real estate agent) take us to see it a week later. Just over a week ago, we wrote up an offer on the townhouse, which was countered, and we accepted the counter-offer the next day. We wanted to wait until after the inspection (which was yesterday) before sharing our exciting news with everyone. The only issue that came up during the inspection was that the seller needs to install carbon monoxide detectors — no big deal. Other than that, the inspector thought it looked great, so the townhouse will be ours in about four weeks! Yay! 😀

Kitchen

The townhouse was built in 2007 and the previous owners took great care of it. It is a green-certified, energy-efficient building with a gas fireplace, bamboo flooring in the main living space, a covered balcony, granite counters, and a gas stove that Nick can’t wait to use. The kitchen is big and open (we can both be in it at the same time, omg!). There are two bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs and there is a bonus room on the ground floor behind the garage. One of the big selling points of the townhouse was its fenced yard/patio area. It’s the perfect size for Nick and me and it looks great without requiring a lot of maintenance. It has a nice raised flowerbed, where Nick and I want to plant herbs. Location-wise, the townhouse is in a good spot, too. It’s only about 8 minutes away from our current apartment and Nick will have about a 30 minute bus ride to get to work.

Yard & Patio

We close on Wednesday, June 20, the day after Nick’s mom and friend, Donna, arrive in Seattle to visit us. It’s actually pretty neat because they’ll be able to see both our apartment and our new home. 🙂  They head back home on Saturday, June 23, so we’ll probably move in to the new place sometime between that weekend and the following weekend, depending on when we can get help.

So, that’s our big news! We’re so excited and can’t wait until next month! 😀