Ryan and I are homeowners!
So much for Flagstaff being a “for now, not forever” home.
Ryan and I just closed on our first home together here in Flagstaff yesterday.
I won’t get too into it because there are a lot of creeps on the internet, but after a few months of light searching and a few weeks of heavy searching, we found a house that we really loved and could see ourselves living in.
We’ve been stalking Zillow for almost as long as we’ve been together, but we finally decided to start the property search in earnest shortly after we got engaged.
We figured it would take us a few months to find something we liked, but we surprised ourselves by finding something fairly quickly.
Ryan and I toured about half a dozen homes before we both stepped foot in the one we purchased. We both walked in and immediately saw the potential.
That’s the word we both used to describe it: “potential.”
Knowing what Flagstaff’s market is like, I had a very, very short list of what I was looking for in a home. Our non-negotiables were:
- Structurally sound (yeah, the market is that bad here in Flagstaff)
- A Homeowner’s Association that doesn’t restrict dog breeds
- Natural light
- At least two bedrooms
- A fenced-in yard
- Designated parking
- A pantry, a laundry room/nook, and a hall closet (or room to build them in)
- A proper primary bedroom with a walk-in closet and bathroom
- Nearby trail access
My list of would-be-nice features included:
- Three bedrooms or a bonus space/ office nook/ alcove/ lofted area
- Tall or vaulted ceilings
- A fireplace (this was a non-negotiable for Ryan)
- A garage (this was also a non-negotiable for Ryan)
- Easy parking for guests
- Nothing recently “fixed up” with “luxury vinyl plank flooring” or cheap plastic backsplash or anything I would immediately rip out anyway
And, I knew I wasn’t interested in new builds, anything owned by smokers, cheap flips or areas outside of town, like Bellemont or Munds Park or Doney Park.
We knew pretty early on that our budget of half a million dollars (Jesus fuck) would likely only get us a townhome, a trailer, an extreme fixer-upper (leaving no money left over to fix it up) or a manufactured home, so we mostly just looked into townhouses.
Half a million dollars for two bedrooms and shared walls, wow I hate it here.
We put an offer in the first week of September (as soon as Ryan left for a fire assignment) and then after a counter offer and a ton of paperwork and all the stuff that comes along with buying a house (inspections, paperwork, insurance quotes, paperwork, financing, breaking our lease, more paperwork) we closed and officially got our keys earlier this week!
We’re stoked!
Now, back to that word “potential…”
We knew when we bought our home that we would need to take on a few smaller projects (removing popcorn ceilings, landscaping, painting) in addition to several larger projects (removing the “third bedroom” and converting it to a loftice, redoing all the bathrooms and the kitchen, installing a pantry, redoing every inch of flooring, getting rid of all the abhorrent Millennial Gray everything) and we’re super excited to get started on those over the coming years.
Ryan was beyond eager to get started. As soon as we got the keys, he immediately started ripping things down and tearing things out.
Although to be fair, I was really quick to tape paint samples up on every wall.
So… follow along! I’ll share more about our property soon (and alllll the reno projects we have planned!) but for now I just wanted to share our good news and our excitement.
