How We Found Our House

About a month ago, Nick was here in LA for work.  He didn't have things to do in the evening, and he didn't have things to do on the weekends.  He looked for houses frequently (in fact, part of the reason I was frustrated was because I would put an address into my phone, get us almost there, and then Nick would say, "Oh, we don't need to see that one--I've already been there"--grr!  Tell me before this minute!).  He went to an open house one Sunday afternoon, and showed me the pictures when he came back home.

I didn't think anything about it.

When we were house-hunting at McDonald's, Nick saw that the house he went on an open house for was still available for rent.  He asked if I would be interested in seeing it, and of course I was, because we didn't have any other options at this point.

So he called the owner, and she remembered Nick!  She said that she had transferred the renting of the property to a rental agency, and gave us his number.  Nick called that number a few minutes later to set up a showing--and the rental agent said that the owner had already contacted him to make sure that we got to see the house!  Crazy, right?

We set up a meeting with the rental agent on Friday morning at 9:00, then planned to drive around to some more houses that we had found that evening.  When we went to bed, Nick said, "I think we're going to end up with that house tomorrow morning."

It was a 45-minute drive from our hotel in Burbank (which gave Nick a pretty good idea of how long it would take to get to work every day), so we headed out early.  Nick already knew where the house was, as he had been there before.  When we arrived at the house, there was another lady there looking at the house, as well (see??  rental-hunting in LA!).  We walked through the house, and I was impressed with a few things:
1. BIG backyard.  I mean, seriously big.  It was definitely the biggest backyard of any house we had been through yet.
2. Nice new kitchen and bathrooms.
3. Organized shelving and things in the bedroom closets.
4. Bedrooms that weren't the size of postage stamps.
5. But a master bedroom that wouldn't fit our king-sized bed.

The rental agent mentioned to Nick that they had a renter set up to move in on July 1st, so if we were interested, then we would need to move quickly.  Nick asked why it was still on the market, and the rental agent mentioned how the owner was kind of....picky...about who she wanted in the house.  But then he mentioned how he didn't think we would have any trouble getting into the house because she already liked Nick. :)

After the showing, Nick and I headed to a McDonald's in the area (yes, AGAIN.  They have free wi-fi!) to talk it over, look on the web to see if any other houses had become available, and discuss whether this house was something we wanted.

After talking about it, weighing our options, and praying about it, we realized that this was the house that we were supposed to stay in.  We took our applications to the rental office, he processed them, and called us an hour later to say that we were approved!

I am not going to post pictures of the whole house yet (gotta give you a reason to keep coming back!), but here are a couple to tide you over:

 

Want to see more house pictures?  Come back and visit the blog again!