Condo Sweet Condo

Over the past month or so, I've learned through Noel what a pain in the you-know-what buying a house can be. When the idea was first tossed around, we had no idea it would play out like it did.  One of my minors during my undergrad was in Housing Studies, and through those classes, I learned ALL about the current housing debacle.  I even had to do a project that involved conducting research on foreclosures for the city of St. Paul.  So, going into this, we both thought it was going to be an easy, painless process since it was a buyer's market.  Pick your property, name your price, good to go.

We were wrong.

Although, yes, in a certain price range it is still a buyer's market.  There are many people who are forced to go into foreclosure because they can't sell their house or can't afford their mortgage payments or whatever.  But it just so happened that we were looking for a steal...and so was everyone else.

There were two houses Noel missed out on because when he went to put an offer down...they had received an offer literally the DAY before.  And let me tell you, that was frustrating.  Other houses in the search would be marked as a "favorite," and then two hours later they'd have an offer on them.  The houses were dropping like flies.

After getting quite irritated with the whole situation, we stumbled upon this FABULOUS condo.  Noel talked to his real estate agent, and surprise surprise, found out there was already an offer on it.  However, there were a couple units for sale in that development, so he decided to check it out anyways.

Well as it turns out, the other person backed out of their offer, so yesterday, Noel got the chance to submit an offer!  We were pretty excited, but we didn't want to get our hopes up because it wouldn't be the first time it didn't work out.  And then this morning came the fabulous news...he officially had his offer accepted!!

We are both SO so excited!!  Noel is pumped because he will get to live in this amazing 3br/2.5 ba condo that's only 5 miles from work....and I am out of my mind ecstatic because I get to make it look fabulous.  I've literally been wasting my entire day away drawing up different schemes and pricing out different ideas.

I am anxious to actually see it in person for the first time when I am back in MN next week so I can get some correct measurements and really start scheming.  One of the issues (and I never thought this would be a problem), that I am coming up with is the space is so BIG.  The condo is 1,900 SF...half of which is pretty much one large open room that houses the kitchen, dining room, and living room.  Naturally, I already have a sketchup model of the unit made...and when I put all of the furniture in....there was SO MUCH extra space left over...and I have a sectional!  I even went online and found one of the biggest dining room tables I could find and the room still completely drowns it.

So, with that being said, you can expect my next blog to be about how to cozy up a huge space...but in the meantime, I just had to share the exciting news!

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!