After the first meeting with our realtor, she was heading out of town for a week. So we knew we wouldn't be able to look at houses right away. She immediately sent us a few listings and asked us for feedback on those, to better help her figure out what we liked and didn't like.
The first house she sent us- we absolutely fell in love. The location was perfect (right down the street from my brother and super close to where we live now), it had everything we wanted- 3 bed, 1.5 bath, 2 car garage, and it had a gloriously large back deck. We continued to look at different listings for the week and told her a few more that we liked.
Additionally, we contacted the finance manager through her office that she had referred us to to get pre-approved for a loan. Doug contacted him, sent him all of our information and then we headed in to his office to discuss the credit checks and everything else. We felt like we were in a good place but were still nervous that something would come back and tell us we couldn't get a loan.
Our fears turned out to be silly though. When we told the lender what price range we were looking in, he pretty much laughed and said we could easily be approved for more than twice that and that our credit scores were great. I didn't even rub it in my husbands face that mine was higher.
So we continued to browse homes online (I regularly had the Howard Hanna website open on my computer) and we waited until our realtor was back in town and we could actually go see the house we were dreaming about.
Though we may have creeped around the outside...and turned my niece into a peeping tom because she wanted to go look in the windows of every. single. house. on the street...not just the vacant one we were looking to buy!
