We bought a house today!

For anyone that's hung around long enough to read my blog for a while, you'll recall we've been trying to find a house to buy.  We even got close a few times-as in accepted offers that either got revoked by the seller or us.  Last night at 530 our realtor called to tell us about a property that was being auctioned this morning at 10AM.  Not so odd except we had told him we decided to stay here and add on, so he wasn't even really looking for a house for us anymore.  We had contacted a SIP home manufacturer and were awaiting their reply as to whether they could build a modified version of their standard plan.  In other words we weren't even looking anymore!  We couldn't get over to see the property before dark yesterday, so we got up early today to have a look.  The auction was at the courthouse at the county seat-an hour's drive from here-so we needed to be ready to head that direction before 9. 

Did I mention we didn't get to see the inside?  Or that to bid on a house at a trustee's sale you have to take a cashier's check in the amount of $10,000 as a deposit?  And the remainder has to be paid prior to 5PM the next day?  How about that we didn't get to see the inside first?  Oh yeah, I did tell you that part already!

We knew at least 2 other investors were interested in bidding.  We knew that both would want to make a quick sale afterward.  We knew we'd be willing to pay a little bit more for that investor to hold the note, should we decide to buy from him or her.  We were told to arrive about half an hour early, but we weren't able to do that and I was getting nervous.  We got to the courthouse at 955AM after having rushed into a branch of our bank that just happens to be across the street from the courthouse.  Tony and Goober Gus went ahead to see if we needed to check in or something like that, bu the trustee's rep wasn't there yet.  Whew.  Another couple and a single lady were though.  Were they there to bid on the same property?  All the excitement!

The trustee's rep told us he hadn't heard from the trustee yet that morning as to whether the sale was going thru.  What?  All this and the sale might not even be today?  OK, maybe that was one way God was answering our prayer to lead us in this transaction.

Turns out the single woman was a rep for one of the investors.  Hmm, how would we handle bidding against an investor with a rep that's well versed in these transactions?  Tony had rehearsed his strategy in his mind on the drive over.  He was going to let someone else open the bid and gauge how serious they were and set our upper limit. 

Having been told there could be a wait, Goober Gus and I went inside to use the restroom.  When we returned, the trustee's rep was reading the legal intro to the sales process, then proceeded to read the details of the property we were there to bid on.  I looked around-the investor's rep was nowhere to be found!  The rep opened the bid at $30,486 and asked if there were any offers.  Tony stammered over his words and started saying $35,000 (our upper limit), while he actually meant $30,500.  The rep instructed us that the first bid only had to be $1 over the opening price, so Tony restated our offer at $30,487.  The rep asked for other offers.  Having heard none, we heard the familiar, "going once, going twice, sold for $30,487"! 

Wait.  What just happened??  Did we just buy a house?  Without seeing the inside?  Do I care?  We just bought a house on 2 acres with 2 pastures, outbuildings, a 5th wheel trailer and backing up to Forest Service land.  We just bought a house.  In the span of 5 minutes!  It's been 10 hours and I still can't quite wrap my mind around it.  We've been looking for about 3 years, gave up and now we have a house for one tenth of what we planned to spend when we were going to build!

God is so good!  Did I mention that we still haven't seen the inside??

Oh yeah,  one of the new neighbors is a lady that was a dear friend of Tony's mom.  They bought the land from Tony's dad years ago.  Kinda funny, huh?