Our new California home

When we decided we would move to California, our first major decision was housing.  Should we buy or rent?  Renting would allow us to get to know the area and decide where to live, and it could potentially be cheaper.  Buying would allow us to settle in right away and not have to move twice, and would mean we'd be investing in something rather than "wasting" our money on rent.  After weighing the pros and cons, as well as researching available sales and rentals, we agreed that we would rather buy.  We didn't want to live in a temporary place for a year and then have to move again.   Plus the rentals we saw online that would meet our requirements (space, allow dogs, etc.) were just as expensive as a mortgage payment.  But we kept an open mind and said that if we didn't find something we loved, we would look into rentals.  Houses are so expensive out here, we only wanted to spend that kind of money if we truly loved a house.

We looked at several houses when we visited in June, and our first Sunday out here, we met with Cristina and looked at more houses.  I met with her again during the week to look at a few new houses.  We found one we liked, but I couldn't commit to it, so we didn't make an offer - it was a nice house with a great yard, but it was missing the walkability I wanted.  After going to a bunch of open houses the following Saturday, we didn't like anything and were pretty bummed.  I was afraid I made a mistake on passing up the house we had liked.

That Saturday night, we were mapping out open houses to check out on Sunday.  Joseph realized that our top two houses so far (both of which had already gone under contract) had large lots, so he figured that's what we liked - they were nice houses with great yards.  He filtered his Zillow search to houses with 4+ bedrooms and 8000+ square foot lots.  This limited the results greatly, and one house popped up in Santa Clara and caught our eye.  We hadn't been looking there since it seemed a little further north than we wanted to go - we were trying to stay within 5 miles of Netflix to keep Joseph's commute short.  But when we opened the listing, we were instantly in love (or at least I was).  It was an historic home that was beautifully redone, and it reminded me so much of our home in Atlanta - it was so different from everything we had been seeing.  It had 5 bedrooms plus a barn, so plenty of room for us, a guest room, and an office for my work.  We mapped the commute, and it was only 8 miles and against traffic, so not too bad.

Joseph went to the open house on Sunday, along with a few others, and he said it was great in person.  He picked up me and the kids and we went to see it together, and I agreed.  We wanted to make an offer immediately!  But a lot of listings here have "offer dates" - basically they try to get as many offers as possible so they can pick the best one.  The house had an offer date until Wednesday, so we had until then to decide what to offer.  Cristina checked it out on Monday, and then all of us went together on Tuesday for one final look.  She drafted up an offer on Wednesday and submitted it.  There was one other offer, so they sent us a counter Wednesday night, asking us to drop the appraisal contingency.  I had never heard of such a thing, but we really wanted the house, so we lowered our offer a little bit and dropped the contingency.  We found out Thursday that we got the house!  It had been a stressful week, so we were extremely excited and relieved!  We were definitely nervous about the appraisal though.  If the house didn't appraise at what we offered, we would only be able to get a mortgage for the appraised value and would have to come up with the difference in cash.  The house didn't have many good comps because of it's size and location, so Cristina wasn't sure where the appraisal would come in.  Luckily it came in at our offer price, so everything was good!  We signed the papers this week, and we officially close on Tuesday.  The current owners are renting back (for free, which is ridiculous, but also apparently common here) until the end of September, so we will move on October 1.

When we found the house, we didn't know much about the area or the schools.  We've done a bunch of research, though, and we think we'll like it.  It's centrally located in the valley, so we can easily get to the other small towns.  The zoned school is okay, but there is an excellent parent participation school (kind of like a charter school) that we can apply to get into.  There are several things we can walk to - two playgrounds, a weekly farmer's market, a few restaurants, an ice cream shop, and a newly opened brewery.

While we're bummed to be in temporary housing for three months, we're making the best of it.  The apartment is pretty nice, and we can walk to a bunch of good restaurants.  Lola loves the elevator, and there is a playground in the courtyard.  I really just want to move so I can get all of our things back!  The supplies here are pretty sparse - I'm missing all of my kitchen tools and baby supplies.

Only 7 weeks until we move - I'll be counting down the days!  Here are the listing photos for the house.  Everyone is welcome to visit!  We will have a guest room, and there's also a barn with a loft in it :)  Note - the current owner is a professional stager, so I only hope we can make the house look this nice!