:: Psst…. ::

As I trotted out to my mailbox (and I can say MY mailbox!), I came back with three letters. One from a mortgage insurance company…TRASH! Another from a friend who was precious enough to send us a Thanksgiving card…thanks Kristen, we LOVED it! And yet another, with no return address but a thick wad of cash inside and a little card inside that said, “RJ and Alice Matagora, The Navigators” and the other side, “Ecclesiastes, the whole book.” My first thought was, WHaaaaaaA?? My second one was, how did someone not pocket this along the way??

One of the things I LOVE about being on staff with the Navigators is witnessing all the unique ways God provides for us through others, whether it’d be forcing me to save money myself so I have enough for hospital bills, financial grants for school, or random acts of kindness through unmarked envelopes in the mail.

I wish we knew who our secret admirer is, but as they gave us no hints (though we know they’re from Eugene!), I hope they’ll read this and know that RJ and I are SO thankful for your generosity! SO SO thankful!

:: God in the Hizzouse ::

Ways we have seen God in the house-hunting process:

1.  God moving us to Riverside, CA, the only place in CA we could afford a decent house with a mortgage equal to or less than what we’d pay for rent for an apartment.

2.  Obama passing the $8000 first time homebuyer credit, even giving us a CHANCE at becoming homebuyers after one year of marriage…I had long wrote off the possibility!

3.  Joe passing along the message about a real cheap condo on sale.  Though we didn’t bite, it got the wheels in our heads spinning as to what actually could be possible.

4.  Hooking us up with sibs that make a ton of cash and would lend us the $8000 for a downpayment.  Definitely not talking about Timmy.

5.  Originally, it looked like we needed RJ’s parents to co-sign on our mortgage, which they graciously agreed to, because RJ’s employment history wasn’t long enough and the way Navs works is that if the wife was on staff before marriage, she gets the pink slip making it look like I just lost my job on paper, though I worked 4 years prior with Navs.  We began our part in May, got the full loan application done in August.  It was kind of disappointing that we’d have to have co-signers, you know, feeling like we’re still kids who need help from their parents, but then a couple weeks ago, our loan officer said she could probably do our loan without the parents!  Which leads to…

6.  God’s timing in the house hunt.   Our ideal timeline was to close on a place by August when our lease ended and get moved in before the school year started.  Not needing RJ’s parents on the loan meant we really didn’t need to wait so long to search and put an offer in.  In retrospect, we really believe it was God’s way of making us wait for the house He wanted us to have and not settling for less than His best just to make our own timeline happen.

7.  I always had my heart set on a little house, but we weren’t sure of the safety of the neighborhoods in our price range and by campus, and so we really thought we’d end up in a cute little condo.  When we were searching though, the condos were just disgusting, in horrible shape, really disappointing.  RJ and I would have had to put in $5000-$8000 up front just to make it liveable, which we don’t have.  I remember thinking, ugh, we’re buying a place that is a dump, is this worth it??  Plus an extra $230/month in HOA fees equals about our rent.  We started considering houses after visiting a bunch of condos in bad condition, and stumbled upon our house.  We drove by and felt safer than we expected in the neighborhood, and decided to officially take a look.

8.  Our realtor said inventory last year at this time was 3000 houses.  This year it is 400.  That means there are a LOT of buyers fighting over a few houses.  When we submitted our offer at market value, there was another one $15,000 higher, plus 6 other offers.  I think RJ and I had to emotionally detach ourselves from the house, but lo and behold, a couple weeks later, our realtor calls and says the highest bidder dropped their bid, and it was down to our offer and two others.  Eventually, ours was chosen, which was CRAZY!  A lesson learned in believing and trusting God for impossible things.  I definitely wrote off the house.

9.  The house is less than two miles from campus, an easy bike ride!

10.  Interest rates have dipped below 5%!  Our realtor had suggested we lock it in, and so I called our loan officer, who said it was still at 5%, which is still AMAZING.  The next day, she called me and asked if I wanted to lock in, because it had dipped to 4.87% overnight!  And she told us a week later that it had gone back above 5% after that day.

11.  Escrow can be a long process, especially for FHA loans.  Part of the stipulation was to try to close by October 29th, which would have been a 30 day escrow period, I think.  FHA are usually at least 45 days.  Our loan officer, who is off the hizzy, got our loan done in about 20 days.  Sande Wilson with Provident Bank.  She is awesome, and a feisty, sassy lady, really good with homebuying noobs like us.

12.  Closing on a home before the November 30th first time homebuyer deadline for this year. We’re cutting it close!

13.  Last year, they had a first time homebuyer credit of $7500, which taxpayers had to pay back over a span of 10 years or something.  This year’s tax credit is a straight $8000 refund, meaning we don’t have to pay it back!

14.  The location of the house is an up and coming location, right across the street from the new site of the UCR Medical School, which is required to open by 2012.  This means that the home value is anticipated to jump up another $100,000-$200,000, allowing us to have a decent down payment for a future house when we move from Riverside.

15.  An amazing realtor, who believes in the work RJ and I are doing with Navs and will be using part of his commission to put back into our new home in the form of garage roof repairs.  Bill O’Rafferty with Trademark Realtors.  He sold Brandon and Kristin their house, Joe and Joy their house, and Lee and Debbie their condo in Riverside, where Los is living now. He’s like the Nav realtor here! =)

16. The inside was in move-in ready condition, and though the price was higher, not having an HOA makes it about the same as the condo monthly, plus we get our own yard and aren’t connected to neighbors!

17. We were prepared to shell out a bunch of money for closing costs, but in the end we got a nice fatty check back from the escrow company (about $1600) because they asked for too much, allowing us to pay for a washer/dryer, microwave, and other “house” stuff that we didn’t need to buy for the apartment.

18. It’s like 2nd wedding in our home! When we were unpacking, we finally got to open wedding gifts we weren’t able to open last year and use last year because we had no room to use them. Hellooooo, KitchenAid mixer!! =) Though I must admit, I’ve gotten quite used to mixing by hand.

19. We can fit all our bedroom furniture into our master bedroom! I am beyond excited about this. All we could fit in our room last year was our bed and one nightstand, and everything was crammed up against the wall. Now we have our bed, two nightstands, a chest, and our dresser in the room! With room to spare!!

20. Our realtor was saying that because the value of our house as gone down, we’ll be paying 1/3 the amount of property tax the bank needed to previously. We needed to pay the compound property tax for this year at closing based on the previous home value, but we should get another nice check back with the extra money put towards property tax that didn’t need to be.

21. There’s an oak tree in the front yard! And we think it’s 50 years old! =)

22. The bank did a great job fixing up the house. New paint, new carpet, new floorboard, new sprinkler set, new stove, new fans, etc etc etc! And we didn’t even have to ask for any of it!

23. After living here for about a week, I am QUITE surprised how safe I feel here! And I have anxiety and fear issues, so if I’m not freaking out, then anyone will be okay! Our next door neighbor is an older man, and he said he hasn’t had any complaints since he’s moved in a year ago.

24. We’ve gotten to meet some nice neighbors the first day we owned the house and had people over to paint. They were way more personable than our neighbs at the apartment. We hope we’ll be able to develop good relationships with our neighbs and great community here.

25. RJ’s parents so generously bought us a brand new fridge, and it is AMAZING! Way larger than our apartment fridge, and probably more energy efficient. It’s beautiful!!

26. We LOVE storage! We have a garage for storage, and PLENTY of closet space! We just LOVE space! You know, at 1000 square feet, our house isn’t huge, but compared to before at 700 square feet, we are just so thankful!

27. We have room to invite more than a couple guests over! And we’ve already had guests over, which I love!

Okay, I wrote your ear off about how we’ve seen God in this whole house and the house-hunting process. I’m the kind of person that gets buyers’ remorse after a purchase and start looking into other options we missed out on, but I haven’t at all. When I start to wonder, “Is this really the house God wanted for us?” I look back on this list and am convinced that we are exactly where we are meant to be. And so I haven’t looked at the housing market since!

All in all, this is God’s house. And we’re thankful for it. =)

:: Because Janet Is Making Me ::

An update!  BTW, RJ and my other blog has just been updated as well.  By me.  Why not consolidate?  I am masochistic.

Just came back from Mikey and Joanna’s CA reception (congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Wang! ), where I got to catch up with my lovely Janet.  Oh, how I miss the candidness of our conversations, and how I can be completely uncensored with her and know she’ll still love and accept me.  Anyways, she made some smarmy remark about how I haven’t blogged in a long time.  So here’s an update.

House hunt! For those who don’t know, RJ and I have decided after praying to try to buy a condo or house by November 30th, to take advantage of Obama’s First-Time Homebuyer Credit of $8000, which we would put towards a down payment.  What we pay for rent now is more than what our mortgage would be for up to a $150,000 house/condo, including taxes and insurance. We don’t have much money, but with the money we do have we want to be good stewards of what God has given us and invest in something that we would own and put towards another house one day.  We believe God wants us to be good stewards of our home as well.  We would love a place of our own with more space, to open up to having staff and students over for dinner, Bible studies, discipleship times, overnight house guests, etc.

RJ and I found a house that we love across the street from where the new UCR Medical School will be in 2012.  We took a leisurely drive through the neighborhood initially to gauge how safe we felt, and it seemed very family friendly.  Kids were running around outside, meaning parents felt it safe enough to leave their kids out.  There were pretty decent cars parked on the street, meaning people weren’t afraid their cars would get broken into or stolen.  It was pretty ethnic, which I think will be really fun. And I think it’s close enough to campus to where students would be able to stop by pretty easily.

The house apparently was bought by an investor as a dump and was flipped.  New windows, new carpet, fresh paint, new laminate wood floors, new roof, etc.  This is a huge plus for us, as some of the condos in the same price range were complete DISASTERS, absolutely disgusting, with missing windows, gross paint jobs, holes punched and kicked in doors, poop looking stuff on the floor, disgusting kitchens, the list goes on and on.  Our realtor said we’d have to put in at least $5000 up front to make them liveable, which is money we don’t have.  So we like that we can move right in.  Another plus is no HOA fee, which is $230/month at the condos we were looking at.

We put an offer on the house two weeks ago, and hadn’t heard anything for two weeks.  We offered about market price, and found out right away there was another offer significantly higher than ours, as well as 7 other offers.  The first week, we called our realtor every other day to see if he’d heard anything.  He seemed pretty pessimistic that our offer would get accepted because of the higher offer, and after a week, RJ and I began to lose hope as well.

Two nights ago, we got a call from the realtor, who said the investor accepted the offer that was a lot higher than ours, but for some reason they backed out.  The investor called our realtor to see if we were still interested, and then told him that it was between our offer and two others. We thought we were already out of the running!!

I felt that was God reminding us of the little faith we have, how quick I am to forget that He is Lord of all, that He reigns, that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He can provide for us just the right house, no matter how much greater the other offers are.  We won’t know until Monday or Tuesday whether our offer is accepted, but we have a renewed hope in God.  Even if our offer isn’t accepted, this reminder that God can take away giants has helped me to remember and believe that it’s not because our offer wasn’t good enough, but because the house wasn’t good enough in God’s eyes to give us.

If you think of us these next couple days, please pray with us about this house!  The market is SUPER tight now.  Our realtor was saying that last year there were over 3,000 houses on the market in Riverside.  There are currently about 400 on the market, which lots of buyers are fighting over.  We want to trust God for the impossible.  This is definitely something impossible!  Never in 1,000 years did I think that my missionary husband and I would be able to buy a home in our first year of marriage.  But God works in crazy ways and unpredictable ways…this time, through our government!