Both Bonnie and I have been rootless for most of our adult lives. I (Mark) have lived in several apartments since college and have always been happy to be a renter and let the landlord worry about the property. During her years as an elementary school teacher, Bonnie rented a house from her mother and was satisfied with that arrangement. When we married in 1999, neither of us was thinking of ultimately owning a house of our own. We didn’t want the responsibility of a house in the U.S. while stationed overseas and leaving it to the mercy of renters. It was nice having no responsibilities here while we were serving the Lord in Cameroon.
However, over the past ten years, people have told us of the benefits of accruing equity in a home and not throwing money away on rent that we would never see again. Also, we needed to consider where we would end up upon retirement. Finally, having a home would provide our girls a place to pin their affections when they were in college and beyond.
The Catalyst
We first seriously considered home ownership during our 2004-2005 furlough when several of our Wycliffe compatriots with whom we’d served in Cameroon bought homes while we were on a trip through the U.S. Mortgage rates were at their lowest point, and the time seemed ripe to take action. However, lethargy kicked in, we didn’t act quickly enough, and then the time was gone and we had to return to Africa. When we returned to the U.S. in July 2008, and the bottom soon fell out of the housing market, the possibility of owning our very own home became real to us again, but, as before, we didn’t do much more than pray about it. I distinctly remember telling God that we were interested in getting a house but probably wouldn’t take action unless He threw one at us. We left the issue in His hands and went on with our business of raising our support level and finding help for our daughter, Theresa, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome the previous April.
Then, on Monday, September 21, Susan came over to return something she had borrowed earlier. We shared a duplex apartment with Susan and her husband, Dennis, who are Wycliffe missionaries. In casual conversation, she mentioned that she and her husband were house hunting and had two prospects that they were undecided about. We talked with her at length about how they had launched themselves into the house-hunting business, and she spoke very positively about their realtor, an MK (“missionary kid”) named Van who had his own business nearby. We asked if we could go with them to see the houses they were considering, and they were happy to oblige.
The next day, we drove around Duncanville looking at some of the homes in the two neighborhoods they were considering. One, Winona Gardens, was a quiet area where several Wycliffe retirees were living. The other, the Greene, was a private community with a home owners association that paid for a central area where one could swim in a pool, play tennis, or walk on a trail. They had a contract with a ten-day escape clause on a home in the Winona Gardens area, but they were leaning towards a home they had put a bid on in the Greene because they liked the sense of community there. After driving around and looking at some of the homes that they had considered, they drove us to their realtor’s residence and introduced us to him. Van turned out to be a tall, soft-spoken young gentleman who was instantly likeable and happy to introduce us to the joys of house hunting. He got on his computer immediately and plugged in our minimum and maximum prices, our search area, and other key information, and we promptly started receiving sale information via email. Also, before we even returned to our place, he took us on a quick tour of four homes that he knew were available, including the house at the Greene that Dennis and Susan had bid on. That was the only house that captured our attention, but, after mulling them over for a few days, none of those homes really held our interest.
This is It!
Everything changed on Friday the 25th. In the morning, a new listing on Fairlawn Drive popped up in our Inbox that looked intriguing, so we called Van and had him meet us at the house that afternoon. It was a two-story three-bedroom light gray brick structure set back from the road in a beautiful neighborhood that was around 1860 sq. ft. and going for a shade less than our upper price limit. The house had been built in 2002 and was in foreclosure. It had a big living room/dining room area with a very large kitchen, a large master bedroom and bath, and two decent bedrooms upstairs for the girls. The yard was large but had been neglected and would need work. There wasn’t much closet space, and the carpet would have to be entirely replaced. However, it really rang our bells.
In the middle of our inspection, I was walking in the driveway thinking of possibilities, and I noticed a familiar-looking man across the street mowing his front lawn. It turned out to be a man I had worked with on several occasions whenever I was home on furlough, a former pilot for the Papua New Guinea branch of SIL currently working in International Management. I hadn’t realized that he lived on that particular street. Having him and his wife living across the street from our potential future home confirmed my opinion of the place.
Somewhere we heard or read that the house had been devalued substantially, and we sensed that it would be snapped up very quickly, so by late afternoon, we told Van that we would accept the bid as offered by the bank. The selling realtor had a daughter that worked there, so we were able to get word to the bank immediately, and, after the daughter placed a call to Houston, we were notified at 7:00 in the evening that the bank had accepted our bid. We couldn’t believe it! Things were moving faster than we had anticipated.
Flip-flop
On Saturday morning, when we checked our email, another listing was in our box, a four-bedroom 1800 sq. ft. house on Tampico Circle. The picture of the exterior looked wholly uninteresting, but we decided to have a look later in the day. In the morning, at my mother-in-law’s request, we all met at the Fairlawn house and walked through it again, noticing things we had missed the first time like the hole in the ceiling above the laundry room and the fact that the front door had been kicked in at some point. The house still looked good, but we were beginning to get concerned about little things: no guest bathroom (other than a sink to wash your hands), no coat closet, and only three bedrooms. We were kind of hoping for a room we could turn into an office. Still, we were feeling positive about the place, and Bonnie’s mother approved of it. From there we drove past the Tampico residence to view it from the outside, and it looked pretty much like the picture, but we noticed that the lawn was St. Augustine grass and very well maintained. We hadn’t intended to bother our realtor over the weekend, but he was willing to show us the place in the afternoon, so we all gathered there again later in the day and viewed the interior.
Almost the moment we walked in the door we realized that it was a better house. It had a distinct entryway with coat closet, two main living areas, four good-sized bedrooms, a nice kitchen, a vaulted ceiling over the central living room with brick fireplace, and a shed in the back. The lawn was lovingly maintained in both yards with no dead trees or debris to remove. The best part was that the seller had made an agreement with the previous buyers (who backed out at the last minute) to sell them the living room set, the dining room set, the refrigerator, the master bed, the riding lawn mower, and gardening equipment for a pittance beyond the asking price for the house. The place was on the market for our upper limit, but we knew that the seller would accept less because this was the previous prospective buyer’s offer.
Again making a decision on the spot, we asked Van to break the contract (not yet 24 hours old) with the bank that owned the Fairlawn residence and establish a contract with the owner of the Tampico house. Fortunately, we were only out $50 on the first place. A few days later, we had the seller’s signature on the contract, and the lender began processing the paperwork for the new place. (We offered the same amount that the earlier people had offered, including the original offer for the extra furnishings, but we did not include a 10-day escape clause. We wanted the seller to feel like she had a more promising offer this time.) We found out later that the previous buyers on the Tampico house were none other than our neighbors in the duplex! They had not only planted the seed that got us started, they practically handed us one of their choices. Because they still had the inspection report and were happy to share it with us, we didn’t even need to have the place inspected. They laid the groundwork; we just followed in their wake.
The Loan
Backing up a bit, when we had first met with Van, we had no idea if we were even eligible for a loan. Neither Bonnie nor I had taken out a loan on anything other than a car that Bonnie paid off quickly when she was single. We paid the full amount of our credit card purchases every month. We had never been in debt, but we couldn’t provide proof that we were a good credit risk. Given today’s credit-averse climate, we really didn’t know if we had a chance.
We asked Van for a recommendation of a lending agency, and he steered us to PrimeLending and a man named T. J. He and T. J. had worked together on real estate for years. Van liked T. J. because he offered a good, fair lending rate, and he and his organization worked hard to meet closing deadlines with a minimum of delays. So, not knowing where else to go, we gave T. J. a call and set up a meeting for the morning after our decision on the Fairlawn residence.
T. J. worked out of an office in Midlothian, an easy drive from Dallas. When we met him, he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and he made a point of bragging about his paperless office. He had a great, easygoing manner, and he made us feel comfortable about the whole process. We had with us the documents that he had requested concerning our financial background (which he promptly scanned), and, doing a quick check on our credit, he determined that we were pre-qualified for a loan. He calculated a mortgage that beat our current rent, so it sounded good to us. (All of this was based upon the Fairlawn residence; it had to be revised after we had switched to Tampico.)
After our initial meeting with T. J., we spoke with him occasionally on the phone, but we did not see him again until closing. Instead, about a week prior, we received an email from Alicia, the Sr. Loan Officer at PrimeLending, wanting to know how we received our income. I emailed her a letter explaining the process whereby members of Wycliffe received their financial support, and that satisfied her for a few days. Then we received another message from her stating that the “underwriter” wanted assurance of a fixed income and that we would be staying in the U.S. Since we do not receive a fixed income, and since we were planning on returning to Africa next July, we felt like our loan was hanging by a thread. Alicia required a word from our supervisor, so we politely asked our Personal Administrator (a former translator from Papua New Guinea) to write her something, and he did. After two more days of silence and much prayer, we received a message from Alicia with one word in the subject line: “Approval”. We made it!
Almost. It was late Friday afternoon on the 16th, and the one thing holding up the process was our lack of homeowner’s insurance. We had probed for a cost estimate online with our bank, but we had taken no further action because neither Van nor T. J. had prompted us to do so. I immediately got on the phone to our bank and, after half an hour of bargaining for a good policy, got that taken care of. Unfortunately, it missed the desk of Melissa, the escrow officer at Reunion Title, by 10 minutes, but she would have it first thing Monday morning. We figured that our closing date had been pushed to Wednesday, but we were happy to have the loan.
Closing
Van called us on Monday morning with the news that closing would most likely be on schedule (i.e. the next day) and that we needed to set a time for it. We picked 9:00am and got directions to Melissa’s office. We also arranged for the down payment and closing costs to be wired to Reunion Title’s bank, and that went with a minimum of hassle. (It was sobering to see our savings account shrink dramatically, but this was the reason we were saving in the first place.) T. J. got hold of us later in the day and confirmed that closing would be as scheduled.
On Tuesday morning, Bonnie and I got in the car and drove down to Cedar Hill, a town just south of Duncanville, to a cute old homestead on one of the principle streets in town. We drove right past it because we didn’t notice that the parking area entrance was before the house – I was expecting a multi-story glass-and-steel structure. Once we figured it out, we walked inside to be greeted by a pleasant receptionist and directed to a room on the right. Sunlight streamed through the windows into a room that could have been used as a formal dining room. A young woman with a cheerful face and straight blond hair walked in and introduced herself as Melissa. She was ready to go right to work with the signing. She sat down in the center of the oval table with her back to the window, and Bonnie and I sat on her left. She passed a whole series of documents to us for our signature, and we spent over half an hour reading through them (more or less) and signing our names where indicated. At one point in the proceedings, T. J. walked in and joined us. Once we had finished signing the last document, the secretary took them and photocopied the lot so that we would have copies for our records. T. J. and Melissa then congratulated us on our new home, and our part of the process was over. The seller still had to come in and sign her place away, and that was scheduled for 2:00pm. That, too, went smoothly (although we weren’t there for it – we never actually met the previous owner), and the seller left the key and a garage door opener for us to pick up the following day. The house on Tampico was now officially ours!!
However, over the past ten years, people have told us of the benefits of accruing equity in a home and not throwing money away on rent that we would never see again. Also, we needed to consider where we would end up upon retirement. Finally, having a home would provide our girls a place to pin their affections when they were in college and beyond.
The Catalyst
We first seriously considered home ownership during our 2004-2005 furlough when several of our Wycliffe compatriots with whom we’d served in Cameroon bought homes while we were on a trip through the U.S. Mortgage rates were at their lowest point, and the time seemed ripe to take action. However, lethargy kicked in, we didn’t act quickly enough, and then the time was gone and we had to return to Africa. When we returned to the U.S. in July 2008, and the bottom soon fell out of the housing market, the possibility of owning our very own home became real to us again, but, as before, we didn’t do much more than pray about it. I distinctly remember telling God that we were interested in getting a house but probably wouldn’t take action unless He threw one at us. We left the issue in His hands and went on with our business of raising our support level and finding help for our daughter, Theresa, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome the previous April.
Then, on Monday, September 21, Susan came over to return something she had borrowed earlier. We shared a duplex apartment with Susan and her husband, Dennis, who are Wycliffe missionaries. In casual conversation, she mentioned that she and her husband were house hunting and had two prospects that they were undecided about. We talked with her at length about how they had launched themselves into the house-hunting business, and she spoke very positively about their realtor, an MK (“missionary kid”) named Van who had his own business nearby. We asked if we could go with them to see the houses they were considering, and they were happy to oblige.
The next day, we drove around Duncanville looking at some of the homes in the two neighborhoods they were considering. One, Winona Gardens, was a quiet area where several Wycliffe retirees were living. The other, the Greene, was a private community with a home owners association that paid for a central area where one could swim in a pool, play tennis, or walk on a trail. They had a contract with a ten-day escape clause on a home in the Winona Gardens area, but they were leaning towards a home they had put a bid on in the Greene because they liked the sense of community there. After driving around and looking at some of the homes that they had considered, they drove us to their realtor’s residence and introduced us to him. Van turned out to be a tall, soft-spoken young gentleman who was instantly likeable and happy to introduce us to the joys of house hunting. He got on his computer immediately and plugged in our minimum and maximum prices, our search area, and other key information, and we promptly started receiving sale information via email. Also, before we even returned to our place, he took us on a quick tour of four homes that he knew were available, including the house at the Greene that Dennis and Susan had bid on. That was the only house that captured our attention, but, after mulling them over for a few days, none of those homes really held our interest.
This is It!
Everything changed on Friday the 25th. In the morning, a new listing on Fairlawn Drive popped up in our Inbox that looked intriguing, so we called Van and had him meet us at the house that afternoon. It was a two-story three-bedroom light gray brick structure set back from the road in a beautiful neighborhood that was around 1860 sq. ft. and going for a shade less than our upper price limit. The house had been built in 2002 and was in foreclosure. It had a big living room/dining room area with a very large kitchen, a large master bedroom and bath, and two decent bedrooms upstairs for the girls. The yard was large but had been neglected and would need work. There wasn’t much closet space, and the carpet would have to be entirely replaced. However, it really rang our bells.
In the middle of our inspection, I was walking in the driveway thinking of possibilities, and I noticed a familiar-looking man across the street mowing his front lawn. It turned out to be a man I had worked with on several occasions whenever I was home on furlough, a former pilot for the Papua New Guinea branch of SIL currently working in International Management. I hadn’t realized that he lived on that particular street. Having him and his wife living across the street from our potential future home confirmed my opinion of the place.
Somewhere we heard or read that the house had been devalued substantially, and we sensed that it would be snapped up very quickly, so by late afternoon, we told Van that we would accept the bid as offered by the bank. The selling realtor had a daughter that worked there, so we were able to get word to the bank immediately, and, after the daughter placed a call to Houston, we were notified at 7:00 in the evening that the bank had accepted our bid. We couldn’t believe it! Things were moving faster than we had anticipated.
Flip-flop
On Saturday morning, when we checked our email, another listing was in our box, a four-bedroom 1800 sq. ft. house on Tampico Circle. The picture of the exterior looked wholly uninteresting, but we decided to have a look later in the day. In the morning, at my mother-in-law’s request, we all met at the Fairlawn house and walked through it again, noticing things we had missed the first time like the hole in the ceiling above the laundry room and the fact that the front door had been kicked in at some point. The house still looked good, but we were beginning to get concerned about little things: no guest bathroom (other than a sink to wash your hands), no coat closet, and only three bedrooms. We were kind of hoping for a room we could turn into an office. Still, we were feeling positive about the place, and Bonnie’s mother approved of it. From there we drove past the Tampico residence to view it from the outside, and it looked pretty much like the picture, but we noticed that the lawn was St. Augustine grass and very well maintained. We hadn’t intended to bother our realtor over the weekend, but he was willing to show us the place in the afternoon, so we all gathered there again later in the day and viewed the interior.
Almost the moment we walked in the door we realized that it was a better house. It had a distinct entryway with coat closet, two main living areas, four good-sized bedrooms, a nice kitchen, a vaulted ceiling over the central living room with brick fireplace, and a shed in the back. The lawn was lovingly maintained in both yards with no dead trees or debris to remove. The best part was that the seller had made an agreement with the previous buyers (who backed out at the last minute) to sell them the living room set, the dining room set, the refrigerator, the master bed, the riding lawn mower, and gardening equipment for a pittance beyond the asking price for the house. The place was on the market for our upper limit, but we knew that the seller would accept less because this was the previous prospective buyer’s offer.
Again making a decision on the spot, we asked Van to break the contract (not yet 24 hours old) with the bank that owned the Fairlawn residence and establish a contract with the owner of the Tampico house. Fortunately, we were only out $50 on the first place. A few days later, we had the seller’s signature on the contract, and the lender began processing the paperwork for the new place. (We offered the same amount that the earlier people had offered, including the original offer for the extra furnishings, but we did not include a 10-day escape clause. We wanted the seller to feel like she had a more promising offer this time.) We found out later that the previous buyers on the Tampico house were none other than our neighbors in the duplex! They had not only planted the seed that got us started, they practically handed us one of their choices. Because they still had the inspection report and were happy to share it with us, we didn’t even need to have the place inspected. They laid the groundwork; we just followed in their wake.
The Loan
Backing up a bit, when we had first met with Van, we had no idea if we were even eligible for a loan. Neither Bonnie nor I had taken out a loan on anything other than a car that Bonnie paid off quickly when she was single. We paid the full amount of our credit card purchases every month. We had never been in debt, but we couldn’t provide proof that we were a good credit risk. Given today’s credit-averse climate, we really didn’t know if we had a chance.
We asked Van for a recommendation of a lending agency, and he steered us to PrimeLending and a man named T. J. He and T. J. had worked together on real estate for years. Van liked T. J. because he offered a good, fair lending rate, and he and his organization worked hard to meet closing deadlines with a minimum of delays. So, not knowing where else to go, we gave T. J. a call and set up a meeting for the morning after our decision on the Fairlawn residence.
T. J. worked out of an office in Midlothian, an easy drive from Dallas. When we met him, he was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, and he made a point of bragging about his paperless office. He had a great, easygoing manner, and he made us feel comfortable about the whole process. We had with us the documents that he had requested concerning our financial background (which he promptly scanned), and, doing a quick check on our credit, he determined that we were pre-qualified for a loan. He calculated a mortgage that beat our current rent, so it sounded good to us. (All of this was based upon the Fairlawn residence; it had to be revised after we had switched to Tampico.)
After our initial meeting with T. J., we spoke with him occasionally on the phone, but we did not see him again until closing. Instead, about a week prior, we received an email from Alicia, the Sr. Loan Officer at PrimeLending, wanting to know how we received our income. I emailed her a letter explaining the process whereby members of Wycliffe received their financial support, and that satisfied her for a few days. Then we received another message from her stating that the “underwriter” wanted assurance of a fixed income and that we would be staying in the U.S. Since we do not receive a fixed income, and since we were planning on returning to Africa next July, we felt like our loan was hanging by a thread. Alicia required a word from our supervisor, so we politely asked our Personal Administrator (a former translator from Papua New Guinea) to write her something, and he did. After two more days of silence and much prayer, we received a message from Alicia with one word in the subject line: “Approval”. We made it!
Almost. It was late Friday afternoon on the 16th, and the one thing holding up the process was our lack of homeowner’s insurance. We had probed for a cost estimate online with our bank, but we had taken no further action because neither Van nor T. J. had prompted us to do so. I immediately got on the phone to our bank and, after half an hour of bargaining for a good policy, got that taken care of. Unfortunately, it missed the desk of Melissa, the escrow officer at Reunion Title, by 10 minutes, but she would have it first thing Monday morning. We figured that our closing date had been pushed to Wednesday, but we were happy to have the loan.
Closing
Van called us on Monday morning with the news that closing would most likely be on schedule (i.e. the next day) and that we needed to set a time for it. We picked 9:00am and got directions to Melissa’s office. We also arranged for the down payment and closing costs to be wired to Reunion Title’s bank, and that went with a minimum of hassle. (It was sobering to see our savings account shrink dramatically, but this was the reason we were saving in the first place.) T. J. got hold of us later in the day and confirmed that closing would be as scheduled.
On Tuesday morning, Bonnie and I got in the car and drove down to Cedar Hill, a town just south of Duncanville, to a cute old homestead on one of the principle streets in town. We drove right past it because we didn’t notice that the parking area entrance was before the house – I was expecting a multi-story glass-and-steel structure. Once we figured it out, we walked inside to be greeted by a pleasant receptionist and directed to a room on the right. Sunlight streamed through the windows into a room that could have been used as a formal dining room. A young woman with a cheerful face and straight blond hair walked in and introduced herself as Melissa. She was ready to go right to work with the signing. She sat down in the center of the oval table with her back to the window, and Bonnie and I sat on her left. She passed a whole series of documents to us for our signature, and we spent over half an hour reading through them (more or less) and signing our names where indicated. At one point in the proceedings, T. J. walked in and joined us. Once we had finished signing the last document, the secretary took them and photocopied the lot so that we would have copies for our records. T. J. and Melissa then congratulated us on our new home, and our part of the process was over. The seller still had to come in and sign her place away, and that was scheduled for 2:00pm. That, too, went smoothly (although we weren’t there for it – we never actually met the previous owner), and the seller left the key and a garage door opener for us to pick up the following day. The house on Tampico was now officially ours!!
From the planting of an idea to pursue home ownership to the actual closing on a home was exactly one month. Our final annual mortgage rate came out to less than T. J.’s initial Good Faith Estimate, and the monthly payments ended up being slightly less that what we were paying on rent at our Sunset Acres residence. The inspection report revealed an out-of-code situation with the wiring, and we spent a substantial amount to get it taken care of, but that was the only thing that needed doing prior to our moving in and taking up residence. (The house at 1010 Fairlawn would have required complete replacement of the carpets, a major repair to a hole in the ceiling over the laundry room, painting of the bedroom walls, and dead tree removal in the back yard – a much more costly investment than what we ended up with.) We have been told that home buying almost never goes this smoothly, and we truly believe that God’s hand was upon the entire process. As of this date (November 9), our former neighbors in the duplex are no closer to closing on a house then they were when they walked away from the one we bought. Their role in the process was essential, and we are praying that the Lord will lead them to the right place in the fullness of time.
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