We are Home Owners

Originally published at Bwana.org. You can comment here or there.

One day in October 2007, I was driving home from getting dinner and when I entered our community, I noticed an "Available" sign on a nice home on a corner lot near the entrance. I quickly stopped, wrote down the phone number and went home. I told my wife about it and she had an idea of the house I was talking about. Little did we know, this was our future.

I called the number from the sign and made an appointment to view the house with the agent. The next day, I viewed the house and took many pictures and videos for my wife. After talking about it, we decided we should pursue it. I called Bank of America that moment and got pre-approved for a home loan. Things were looking really really good, until I checked my current lease. I had 6 months left on my current rental and I saw something that I did not want to see. I saw that if I broke the lease, I would have to pay rent until another tenant could be found.

Well that's not good.

I called the agent and told him the situation. I quoted "If it's meant to be, it'll happen". Foreshadowing? Yes. I told my wife "If that's the house that God has for us, then He'll make a way". 2 months pass and I get a knock on the door from the Sheriff's office. It just so happened the house we were in was in the process of being foreclosed. It just so happened no one told us about it. It just so happened we were pretty shocked. So now, we have to find a place to move to and quickly. Wait a minute, can't we get out of our lease now?? I immediately called the lease agency and sure enough, foreclosure kind of supersedes the earlier clause we dreaded. So now we were free and clear to find whatever we wanted. It just so happened the house we wanted was still available. So to make a long story short, we looked around in Tampa a bit but ended up deciding on the house we thought we lost. I put in an offer, it was accepted, and we closed on Dec 31st.

We are home owners. Thank you God.