It’s coming up on our 13 year wedding anniversary and there are a lot of firsts that happened to us around this time of year.* One is the first time we bought a house. We had been married one year and already expecting our first baby. My husband and I lived in Washington D.C. and were your typical young urban professionals. Living anywhere but inside the District of Columbia was a non-option. Our realtor kept showing us newer, even less expensive homes in Maryland, some even in Virginia, but we didn’t want to consider them. We both worked in the District so the commute alone would’ve been enough to make our lives miserable.
After months of searching, we found a home right in the District. Not too far from a metro stop and close to Catholic University. It was a three bedroom row house built in 1923 located in a quiet and transitional neighborhood. Most of the residents were older and hadn’t moved in decades. The house we loved was owned by two generations of the same family and needed a lot of work.
I’ll never forget the first time we walked inside. Most of the flooring was covered in fire engine red shag carpet from the early 70s. The kitchen had not been updated since the first episode of the Brady Bunch aired and nothing worked. The electricity was inadequate, the basement had water damage, and the bathrooms looked like they had not seen bleach, ever.
Yet we loved the house.
Our realtor thought we had lost all sense of reality. We didn’t see the damage and the amount of work, we saw the architectural details of the plaster walls, the thick wood flooring under the carpet, the galley style kitchen. We saw the home back in its glory and the potential it had. The amount of work the house needed though was more than what we could afford in cash. Thankfully my husband worked for Fannie-Mae at that time so he knew what lending options were available to us. I don’t remember the name of the loan but today a loan similar to what we obtained is called a Homepath loan. The HomePath program was created by Fannie Mae to offer foreclosed homes directly to qualified buyers. This special program allows buyers to qualify with the minimum down payment and can even give money to renovate the house.
The type of lending is called 203k mortgage. The advantages of this sort of loan is that you can finance the home value and renovations. Rather than having several loans, we were able to get one loan to both purchase and renovate the house.
After we closed on the house we got busy with renovations. We had a lot of work to do and I was three months away from delivering the baby. Not to mention our lease ended in only six weeks. We hired a crew, moved into a hotel for three weeks, then got to work. We just needed to finish enough of the house to make it livable.
Two months later, we were in our house. The kitchen wasn’t finished yet but the house was ours and it felt like new. Although we have since moved from that house, I’ll never forget how much we loved it. Every detail meant something to us, from the restored walls to the polish of the wood floors.
Restoring a home was definitely a rewarding process for us. One filled with great memories and easier because of our lending solutions.
What memories do you have of your first place?
*Disclosure. This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.
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