Milly

We bought a house.

Her name is Milly and she needs a lot of little love doses, nothing major, just enough to spruce her up.  She's a high maintenance gal who hasn't received the attention she deserves through the years.

She's also a big girl - 10.72 acres of mostly wetlands.  And a creek!

She also needs more trees.  You can never have enough trees or privacy.  Being able to see the neighbors is so 2000, although I hear that the old lady who lives in that house condo is lovely and only resides there in the summer.

Three things I wish I'd known before buying a house:

1. After the sellers accept your offer, things move fast.  We had a week to formally submit our mortgage application, schedule and attend the inspections, and reschedule and attend the reinspections.  Milly had to have a well and septic inspection, a secondary house inspection to get into the attic because it was previously blocked, and then a specialized attic inspection to determine if there was mold.  (Yes, there was!)
2. Underwriters will make silly requests.  Our parents gifted us a small amount of cash to meet the down payment.  At the beginning, we weren't sure of the exact amount so our mortgage broker imagined an amount that would be more than enough to bridge the gap.  When we finalized the numbers, we determined that we needed less than previously stated .  The underwriters demanded a letter explaining why the gift amount would be less even though it wouldn't have affected our down payment either way.
3. Something will probably go wrong.  The day before our original closing, the title company's computer system crashed.  The day of our second scheduled closing, the seller's agent delivered a lien on the property to our real estate agent that the judge had finally approved the week before.  We made the third scheduled closing after the attorneys for the seller and the lien holder came to an agreement.

Buying a house is really scary.  I slept poorly throughout the entire process.  You sign 1001 documents at closing and it seems as if you are signing your life and your savings away.  Which you are!