Why, Hello There!

Our Story

My husband, Ben, and I got married on 10/4/14. We had a beautiful wedding on a farmette in Westminster, MD. We were fortunate that the family whom owned the amazing property allowed us to get married there because it was a working farm and they didn’t have a wedding venue business. The property was complete with a gorgeous deep red bank barn, and the backdrop for photos couldn’t have been more perfect. We even had a mechanical bull, which was a must for me. I highly recommend it! LOL On that day, not only did I become a wife, but I also became a step mom. Kayla was 11 at the time and Nate was 9. They lived full time with us in a modest 1,800 sq ft house in Pasadena, Maryland.

Fast forward to 2020. Our family has grown to 6… our daughter, Sadie was born in 2015 and our son, Mason was born in 2018. Our house is certainly full of life & lots of excitement. In February 2019, we stumbled upon a house for sale in Randallstown, MD (about 35 min from our Pasadena home). Well… stumbled is probably the wrong word, as I’m in the real estate industry, but that’s a story for another time (coming soon). The property was a short sale, and had a lot to offer for the list price. Even though we didn’t know if we could qualify to purchase it, we decided to take a look… it just so happened to be Valentine’s Day (coincidence?) and as cliche as it might be, we completely fell in love with the place. The insanely huge 8,500 sq ft house, that seemed to go on and on especially compared to our current home, the almost 4 acre lot, the in ground pool, the sport court (yes… a freakin sport court) and the 3 barns including a huge barn/garage with 3,200 sq ft apartment over top!!! Now… I’m sure you’re thinking, well damn… that sounds like a property from heaven! But let me tell you, although it had a lot to offer, we had to look past a lot of things (literally belongings in the house) and the house was in desperate need of cosmetic updates.

While we were still at the house, I called one of our real estate teams preferred lenders (I work for a real estate team as an admin) and had him run the numbers. He called back by the time we got home, and told us that everything looked good, so we quickly put together an offer!! The listing agent informed me that there was a lot of activity on the house and he expected multiple offers. We submitted the offer that evening. I was scheduled to fly out to New Orleans the next day for a big real estate conference, Keller Williams Family Reunion. It had been planned for months. I was on edge during that entire flight… anxiety as high as the damn plane LOL I was finally able to communicate with the world again once we landed. I found out that multiple offers had been received, but the seller selected ours. We were officially under contract!

One hurdle was over, but we still had many more to come. Short sales are anything but short. Because the seller owes more on their mortgage than what the property is worth (shortage), the contract is contingent upon third party approval from the sellers mortgage company. While we waited for short sale approval, we continued with our inspections and lending requirements. The house needed a lot of work and could only be purchased using cash or a renovation loan. We were not in the position to pay all cash, so in order to qualify, we had to utilize FHA 203k financing. This allowed us to finance the cost of the required appraisal repairs, which ended up being a decent chunk of money.

After several extensions for the short sale approval contingency, we FINALLY received a response from the bank in July 2019 (5 months later!). The bank countered the sale price and we accepted. It took several more weeks to receive the official short sale approval letter, which ultimately resulted in a delay of processing our loan. The approval letter stated that we had to close by 8/29/19. We had a date!! We were so excited to finally have a date to look forward to. However, just a few days before closing, I got a call from the listing agent. He informed me that the seller had filed Chapter 13 Bankruptcy and the home sale could no longer go through because the house was included in the bankruptcy. Guys… this rarely happens. I certainly never had it happen in the 10 years of working as a real estate admin. We had come so far and I could not take that as the end to our story. So, I got on the phone right away with the short sale attorney (hired by the listing agent), then made several more calls to the bankruptcy court, bankruptcy trustee, etc. After several more weeks, I was able to obtain an extension from the short sale bank, and the house was ultimately “abandoned” by the bankruptcy trustee so we were able to move forward with the short sale.

We finally settled on October 9, 2019. The house was officially ours!! The process was certainly a roller coaster… but I am beyond happy that we stuck through it. Every time something came up, I felt like God was testing us. We put our trust in Him. We had faith in Him. We prayed a lot. He came through and we are so grateful. Since we purchased the house, we have been consumed with renovations and ideas. We decided to share our journey, and hope to inspire others. We hope you enjoy our blog as we continue document our journey <3