(Almost) Homeowners!

OMGsh OMGsh OMGsh! We are almost homeowners! So exciting and so scary all at the same time. Here's a little bit about how we came across this condo.

So our real estate agent, Susan Souder, is my aunt. She's been a realtor in Howard County for over 30 years. What a huge blessing and advantage it was to have her as our agent! So knowledgeable and so amazing at what she does! So we met with her maybe end of December or early January to get the whole process going. She got us on her email list so we could start getting a feel for what was out there. We would casually look, knowing we didn't need to get serious until around March-April.

Some properties stayed on our list, some went, and after a few months of starting at the list, we finally decided to go see a few. What a fun experience! Some places we'd seen in pictures and liked, we hated in person. And places we'd been indifferent to in pictures, we fell in love with in person. We started to fall in love with a neat condo and decided to put an offer on it. We met with Aunt Susan the next day and went over all the paperwork...boy was that insane. Come to find out that condo had already been sold and apparently the selling agent was still living in the stone ages. Haha. 
We were a little discouraged, and decided to give it a break. Of course the morning after we decided to give it a break, a small townhouse popped up on our automatic listing that was literally across the street from our apartment complex. We love this area, so then we had to go see it! We went and it was adorable and we loved it. So we decided to put an offer on it. While waiting to hear back, Aunt Susan got wind there was a second offer, so then Mike and I panicked. We spent a few hours trying to decide whether or not to change ours and we decided to leave it. Well...they took the other offer. Grr. We were so annoyed. 
Back to square one... Later that week, one afternoon, I was finishing up at work and Aunt Susan emailed me a listing and asked if we wanted to go see it that evening. I took a quick peek and saw it was cute and told her yes! Mike was annoyed and didn't want to go. We got there and it was older and weird shaped. For some reason, though, I kept picturing us there and trying to convince Mike. He was having nothing of it. So we left, discouraged again. 
A few days later, nothing new had really popped up and Mike emails me while at work saying..."I am kind of thinking I liked that last place we saw..." Shocking, he liked it, but didn't want to admit it! So we went to see it again that night. And we thought we could make it work so we decided to put an offer on it! And they accepted! We couldn't believe it! So we really have Aunt Susan to thank for the find and for begging the seller's to allow us to see it on a night they weren't planning to show it. :) 
We are already planning our DIY projects and yep, you guessed it...I'll be blogging about them! I am going to try to be good about it, haha! So we'll see how that goes. 

Here are a few fun pictures from our search: 

This is the first condo we really liked & tried to put an offer on. It had some neat aspects and a loft. 

This was the townhouse we loved loved loved but that went for way above asking price. 

Here is the place we chose! Mike was obviously over looking at it. Haha. 

Our future kitchen! :) 

So settlement is set for May 15th! We are counting the days--we can't wait!