Wonder Woman in Training: Ticking down the days until closing...

Man has the last month been chocked full of real estate drama. Last year I entertained the idea of buying a house but after looking at dozens of "shacks" I gave up. 300K buys you what in Seattle? Uh....pretty much nothing except houses in transitional areas, ghetto areas, or houses that need some "minor" work like floors, walls, foundations, etc. Considering Marcus already has a huge house project I decided I really didn't want to tackle another. The house is great but living in a constant construction zone starts to take it's toll after a while. I figure buying a condo is a great idea. We have a nice place to stay while the house remodel continues and then afterwards I can either rent or sell. Perfect!

Last month I resumed the real estate hunt and finally found an awesome condo right on the border of Leschi and the CD. The building was built in 2004 to be condos, but the developer had concerns about a soft condo market so they converted them to apartments. So much for that soft condo market....haha. They've all been newly remodeled and converted to condos again. Conveniently, it's only a few miles from the house.

I put in my offer and it got accepted...then came the headache. I thought I was approved, then found out I had issues on my credit report I didn't know about and had to clean up. I spent hours on the phone to creditors trying to resolve everything and get proof of resolution...gee, that's fun! Meanwhile I kept creeping closer to the closing date with no financing secured. I got stressed out and decided to withdraw my offer to take the time to straighten out financing but the sellers agreed to give me more time. Then I got confused and couldn't figure out what to do. I was nearly "this" close to forgetting about the whole thing when my lender called yesterday and said, "Hey! We just pulled your credit...everything is fine now and you're set!" Whew! So now I'm in this mass flurry of paperwork trying to get everything settled by the original closing date of May 4th, which is next Friday. Crazy!

I guess I'm on my way to becoming a first-time homeowner. It's exciting and stressful all at the same time! Here's some pictures of a model unit that is just about identical to mine. It's pretty!