A Spring Break to remember

When I was in high school and college, I never really did the spring break thing. I usually stayed at home, read books for leisure, slept in late, and spent time with my family. The same has been true since I've been a teacher.

This year Wes and I had planned a trip to Nashville over my Spring Break. Originally we intended it to be a house-hunting trip, hoping to find a rental that was opening up when we needed it. It became obvious as we made appointments, though, that few of the houses we could see would still be open then -- most were already sitting vacant. So we adjusted our expectations and planned to drive around a lot, see neighborhoods, look in those houses available to get a sense of what we would need to pay to get the house we wanted, and spend the rest of the time enjoying Nashville -- the zoo, storytime at the library, swimming at one of the indoor pools.

And that's pretty much what we did for the first two days. Then Monday came around, and over the course of a few hours, all of our appointments to see rentals were cancelled. Everything had been rented. In talking further with a few realtors, they told us to plan to come back two weeks before we planned to move in. Nothing would sit open, they said, and no one would hold a place for us unless we started paying on it. Wes and I looked at each other, wondering what to do.

And so we talked once more about buying. Our major hang-up was a down payment. We couldn't put down 20% on a house we wanted to buy, even though we could comfortably make the mortgage payment. And we didn't want to buy something we weren't confident we could resell in about 5 years, in the event we wanted something bigger, somewhere different, or we had to or chose to leave Nashville altogether. A visit to the emergency department offices as Vanderbilt produced the name of a realtor who knew the Franklin and Brentwood areas (where we thought we were going to buy) and the name of a bank that did special mortgages for physicians. Suddenly, we were buying a house. We hadn't researched housing costs, didn't know what PITI or PMI or ARM stood for, and didn't even really know what we wanted to spend -- all the kinds of things Wes and I would have done had we prepared ourselves for this.

Two days looking at houses in the 'burbs with our great realtor taught us a few things: 1) online pictures can lie, 2) we could get a great house with a small lot or a huge lot with an old house, and 3) traffic going into Nashville would mean a 30-45 minute commute each way to get in to Vanderbilt -- possibly longer in really bad traffic. On Thursday, Wes drove through an area 1-2 miles outside of campus called Belmont/Hillsboro. Everything was built between 1910-1930, a lot were rehabbed, and thanks to some detached garages, there are decent little fenced lots. There is a big park nearby, and most of the houses there go to what is considered to be the best elementary school in Nashville (with priority in a lottery to attend another nearby school with a Spanish immersion program). Wes saw some "for sale" signs, wrote down the addresses, and onto MLS we went.

Most of the houses were out of our price range -- the ones with both the rehabbed inside and the big lots -- what our realtor gently described as "next time." But a few were at a price we could consider. When we looked at houses on Thursday morning before heading home, we finished in Belmont/Hillsboro. It took me one minute in the first house, the only one we could get an appointment at, to fall in love with the house, the neighborhood, everything. After two days and twenty houses outside of Nashville, we were choosing a neighborhood right near Vanderbilt.

There was one house we really wanted to see -- one that seemed to meet all our needs -- but we couldn't get an appointment until after 5pm. Wes and I had said we couldn't stay, had to get back to Chicago. But after seeing the neighborhood, we decided to hold out a few more hours and get in. We looked at the house from 5-5:15pm and were sold on it very quickly. We wrote the contract over the phone with the realtor that night. I drove; Wes talked; Oliver mercifully slept. A week -- and several counter offers -- later, we have a contract. Papers are being signed, home inspections are being ordered, earnest money is begin paid. The process to buy our first house has begun.

The whole process has been kind of nuts. This house is as close to perfect for what we want as I can imagine, but like with any home, I have my reservations. The people who own the home redid it five years ago. They have a clear perspective in their design, and it's pretty contemporary and bold. I love the way the house looks, and a part of me is afraid that what we do with it won't live up to what they've done with it. I can't decide what's me (the fireplace for sure, and the clawfoot tub upstairs) and what I like but that isn't me (the color in the dining room? the bar stools in the kitchen?). Plus it'll be years before we can fully furnish the place.

For now I'm excited about the prospect of having a front porch with swing (we wrote that into the contract specifically) and a true backyard, fully fenced, all my own. We actually saw another house a few streets over that we loved, even more than this one, but that didn't have the outdoor space, or even really the possibility of it, and I've spent too many years in cold temperatures to pass up a place to be outside. I'm excited about neighbors with little kids and the big park with a swing set. I'm excited about the cute shops and restaurants a half-block away. The rest, well, we'll figure it out.