Long story short, we bought a house!
For the long story long:
A couple months after selling our condo we began looking for a house. Our original budget left us looking for places around Cerritos, specifically in Lakewood and Buena Park which there were plenty of options but few that matched all our criteria (good location, good bones to the house, good schools). We went would visit random open houses and many usually had only minor issues that we just couldn’t look pass between being located too far from the freeway again, or being recently updated with styles that didn’t match our styles.
We finally found a house on the west side of Buena Park that looked very promising with a location in the Kennedy HS school district, and cheap enough to leave us a budget to do some renovations, which we put an offer in and got accepted in December. We were pretty excited but when the home inspection came in, it revealed too many problems, from bad plumbing and an un-permitted addition to the house that just didn’t sit well with us so we cancelled that purchase.
After that process we were a little bummed, but unperturbed we continued our search. The following Saturday night while lying in bed in the dark i found a new listing on a house in Cerritos within our budget which is a serious unicorn. I quickly texted our real estate agent and she said she would try to find out more. Sunday morning she texted back that we can see the house in the morning.
The next day we checked out the house, everything seemed to be in order and we put in an offer at asking price and the following day it got accepted. There were a few small issues that came up during inspection but the sellers were quite accommodating with making the fixes and some 40 days later we got the house. We also learned that there were seven backup offers on the house and we really lucked out on being the first one to put in an offer.
Once we got the keys to our house we started on a few projects that turned into a lot of projects once everything was said and done. In the end we scraped the ceilings, recessed lighting, put in laminate flooring in the living room and hallway, tile in the kitchen, and redid both bathrooms from floor to ceiling.
Alice is enjoying the new house as she has her very own purple room, and a brand new tub to take bathes in. Having our very own laundry has been probably the most exciting thing for me since in our condo we still were sharing the machines with other people.
The biggest project left is our gigantic backyard. It looks like there used to be a couple really big trees that tore up the ground which made it all uneven. I’m planning on cementing most of it and making a smaller green area off to the side of the house, but that will be a forever project that i’ll work on little by little.
A very big thanks go to my parents who we were staying with for the last 7 months while everything was taking place.
