It was my birthday. And not a very young one at that, I was just turning 43. For the first time ever I was seriously shopping for a house. Trent had gotten a new job at WSU. We had flown to Pullman and had talked to a banker about pre-approval. Realtors in Pullman and Moscow were showing us houses. Nothing bit in Pullman, but Moscow had a promising house or two. Our realtor said she had held a house open for us, but finished it up with “You a day to make a decision”.
Lets step back and discuss my headspace to this point. My whole adult life I was frozen around buying a house. It went sort of like this. I think I can afford $50,000, but they all cost $100,000. Then, I think I could manage $150,000, but they were $200,00. Probably culminating in Santa Barbara thinking $200,000 seemed doable now that they all seemed to be $500,000 and rising. Mind you I never talked to a realtor, banker or even fantasized about having a house or what I would like. Completely shut down. No dreaming.
My, best friend’s, response to all this, “You don’t want a house or you would have one”. She was probably right, because when we got to Moscow, and Trent had a job and houses were in the 100,000’s, I jumped and didn’t even consider whether it was a good investment or could we afford it. Let alone how we were going to come up with a down payment or what made sense for a monthly payment. It all went in to my gut and I just FELT about it rather than THOUGHT about it. In hindsight, from today’s headspace, I would say I let my intuition take center stage and my ego fell off. It would be years before I consciously started seeking out my intuition for almost all decisions.
I wasn’t coming at this completely blind, as I had poured over houses online for the last month or two, getting a sense of what was for sale and how much they were going for. They sure seemed affordable coming from California; let alone anywhere else I had lived. Later a colleague told me he thought we had paid too much, but it was a seller’s market and I was ready.
The neighborhood looked appealing, the house had good bones and was on a large lot. Also as I shared before, it was in need of a serious upgrade and nobody had messed with it, a budding architect’s dream. Before we left town we had said yes and never looked back.
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