The first snag

I was on my way to Winston-Salem for a meeting when I got a call on my cell phone from the agent. We wrote the cashier's check to HUD, and apparently it needed to be made out to the agent or the escrow lawyer.

I need to find a way to meet the agent, exchange the check and get it back to HUD by the deadline, and I'm heading in the opposite direction of all these things. I tell them I'll leave the meeting early and meet them in Statesville to exchange the check.

As I head back to Statesville I call the agent. He says I just have to cancel the old check and have them print a new one, without him there (which means without the original check). I assumed he knew more about it than I did, but just to be sure I called my bank and asked them about cancellation fees and procedures. My receipt was neatly filed in a folder ... in Hickory. I was 30 minutes east of Statesville, and it was closing in on 4 p.m. My bank said I would need to go to the branch where the check was originally printed. Could I make it home and back to Statesville before 5 p.m.? It would be close, but I was going to try. Our home may be on the line.

I did make it to the bank. With receipt in hand at 4:50 p.m., I walked to a cashier and asked for a new check. She looked at me like I was stupid. Clearly, I need the original check. The receipt is nice, but without the original it will take 90 days to cancel the check. 90 days? I have less than an hour.

The bank saw my distress and tried to come up with a solution. Maybe the agent could go to a branch in Charlotte and they could call them to get a new check. I call the agent, tears swelling in my eyes.

Very calmly, the agent tells me it's OK, he'll just meet me in Statesville in the morning with the check.

Wait a minute. It doesn't have to be in by the deadline? Distress turned to anger. Anger turned to tears.

I thanked the bank for their help and walked out at 5:05 p.m.

Why didn't the agent tell me the correct payee when I made out the first check? Why didn't they tell me I didn't need to have the new check by today? All these questions left me angry and scared. Is this agent looking out for me? Aren't they supposed to the be experts here?

I met the agent at the bank the next morning and told him all my frustrations. He apologized, explained that HUD recently changed a lot of its paperwork and requirements, then went with me to the cashier for the correct check.

Although not completely appeased, I did believe him. But I don't think I'll be as trusting as I was before.

48 hours

The agent met us at the library to fill out the paperwork. Since he works in Charlotte and we live in Hickory, we had to find a place to meet that wouldn't be inappropriate -- like work. (On a side note, it was my first time in the Iredell Public Library. It's nice!)

The paperwork was simple. We signed or initialed about five pages, including a contract authorizing the agent to be our agent.

The earnest deposit had to be a certified check, so we went to our bank and pulled out $1,000 (an amount determined by HUD). Money was tight, but scrimping until the next paycheck was an acceptable price to pay for our first home.

The agent took our money and our signatures and headed back to Charlotte. Well within the 48 hour deadline, we were feeling confident everything was going according to plan.

I started thinking about what we'd do first once it was ours.

Big news

I woke up at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, much like I did on Christmas morning as a child. Don't government offices open insanely early? Maybe I can find out the bid results. The agent said he would let us know as soon as he knew about the bid, but I wasn't going to wait for him. I found the HUD bid results Web site for North Carolina on the Internet, so I logged on to check.

My heart sank.

It said the house was now open to public bidding. Did we not bid enough? There's no way we didn't bid enough. Can we afford to bid more? Is some investor going to swoop in and buy OUR house?

I had to get away from the computer, get my mind off the house. I went to the gym and took out my aggression on the treadmill. I couldn't get it off my mind.

There's no time to obsess about this house, I told myself. You have to get ready and go to work. Make yourself useful. Stop obsessing!

By the time I had the house off my mind, I was at work buried in my to-do list. That's when I got an e-mail from our mortgage broker about our underwriting approval (do I know what that means? no.). Snap. I was back in my obsession.

I checked the bid results site again.

A bid was accepted. The bid was for the same amount we bid. What are the chances someone else bid and won with the same number we submitted?

I called Brad repeatedly, trying to get him out of bed so I could tell him the news. But Brad is a heavy sleeper and he works a later shift, so voicemail was my best bet. After I told him, I started the phone tree.

Brad was in charge of e-mailing his side of the family. I called my parents, my aunts and my brother. Then I called our agent to be sure it was, in fact, our bid that won. Is that a little out of order? Probably. But obsession does funny things to an otherwise rational brain.

Lucky for us, it was our bid. We had 48 hours to submit our sales contract and an earnest deposit or it would be relisted to the public.

Telling the family

We broke the news of our house bid to the family during a Memorial Day cookout during that extended weekend.

It came out of the blue for most of the family, especially since we had previously hinted at next summer for the big move. The news was well received, and we spent most of the cookout describing the house, the neighborhood and how we may not get it. The entire family formed a phone tree so we could spread the news as soon as we knew the next day.

Perhaps the most useful of the conversations that day was with Brad's uncle, who buys and rents out nice homes. He gave us advice on what to fix, and what will bring us the most bang for our buck when we decide to sell it.

Brad's parents were perhaps the most excited. Buying a house brings them one step closer to grandparenthood.

They all assured us we would win the bid, and as we left as I was even more excited and nervous about the bid.

A different process

Since we have never purchased a home before, I don't know that much about how the foreclosure purchase process is different. I can tell you it's a hurry and wait process.

The first 10 days of a HUD listing is owner-occupant priority, which means they will sell to someone who will use the property for their primary residence before they'll sell it to an investor. The house we wanted would go public after Memorial Day, which was four days away. If we wanted it, we'd have to bid by Friday since the agent wouldn't be in the office on Memorial Day weekend.

It took an intense conversation to convince Brad that this was the one and we couldn't take our time making decisions. He worried that we were rushing into something, and maybe we were. But the house was in such good condition, hit the market right when we were looking, and was such a good price that I pushed hard for it.

We called our agent on Friday night and instructed him to submit our bid. We had no idea if anyone else submitted bids, and we had an extended holiday weekend to wait and hope it would be ours.

And the winner is

I contacted the real estate agent listed on the Web site I'd browsed and set up an appointment to tour Hardwoods and Suburban. It took less than an hour, and the agent was sure to be a part of the discussion for each house. She also pointed out things we wouldn't have looked for, like stained paint being a sign of leaks.

After visiting the top two on our list, Brad and I talked about our options. Could we have toured more? Probably. But that little imp in my stomach seemed content.

During my Googlefest I had also looked into mortgage options (which is an entirely different conversation). When he heard what our actual mortgage payment would be per month, he was angry. I had told him it would be approximately the same per month as our rent, and it was.

Thing is, I didn't know much about taxes and insurance. We'd have to readjust our monthly budget, but we could definitely do it.

Although the idea of debt scares the life out of Brad, he begrudgingly agreed to move ahead on our choice.

We called the woman who toured the homes with us and told her we wanted to make a bid on the foreclosure.

And then the race began.

Ready to tour

I made a little chart with the four homes at the top of my list and mapped out the pros and cons of each. Here's what I came up with:

House A (Big Porch)

• (+) Nice curb appeal. The porch steps go straight to the sidewalk, and the porch itself wraps around two sides of the house. It's on a corner lot.
• (+) Good shape. From the Internet photos, the house looked to be in good shape. The siding was crisp and clean, and the windows looked relatively new. Photos of the inside looked good as well.
• (-) Bad view. I got directions and drove by the house to see the neighborhood and how it looked in person. It was then that I found out the beautiful porch overlooks the railroad tracks.
• (-) Questionable neighborhood. As I drove down the road, it looked as if this was the nicest house in the neighborhood (something my house hunting Google searches told me not to do).

House B (the Colonial)

• (+) Lots of space. The square footage alone attracted me to this property.
• (+) Nice yard and curb appeal. This house looked good from the photos posted on the real estate site. The yard was larger than the others, and it was well manicured.
• (+) Close to work. After mapping out where the house was, I found out I drive by it every day on my commute.
• (-) On a busy street. Since I drive by it every day on the way to and from work, I realized the street may have too much traffic for me to handle on a daily basis.
• (-) Needs lots of work. I did (once again) a Google search of the address and found an appraisal done by the sellers on the Internet. With it was more photos and a property report. It was in need of many repairs, including a new roof. I didn't want to get myself in too deeply.

House C (Hardwoods)

• (+) Space. It didn't quite look like a two-story house, but it had two floors. It also offered a lot of square footage.
• (+) Charm. It is an older house with lots of little details, like a clawfoot tub, architectural windows and restored hardwood floors. There are several beautiful old homes around it, some under renovation.
• (-) Outdoor space. After finding the house, I found a very small driveway shared by neighbors. It would be hard to navigate our cars in and out of it. The driveway was also gravel. The yard was not manicured, and the back of the house looked more like a rural farmhouse than my mental picture.
• (-) Neighborhood. The house is on a busy street near an industrial area.
• (-) Appraisal to listing price. After (yep, you guessed it) Googling the home I found an Iredell County Web site with tax rates and appraisal cards. When I entered the address, I found that the tax value of the home was almost half the asking price. That made the imp in my belly kick me again.

House D (Suburban)

• (+) Newer home. Of all the homes on my list, this was by far the newest.
• (+) Cute neighborhood. Because it is what I call a slash-and-build, the neighborhood is full of equally cute, new homes.
• (+) Great location. It is off a major thoroughfare, but close enough to shop and get to work in under 5 minutes.
• (-) Slash-and-Build. The neighborhood has almost no trees. It looks as if a builder cleared a huge field and built houses on it. No trees means no privacy, and also no shade. The recent drought also took a toll on the yard, which was in desperate need of water and seeding.
• (?) Foreclosure. When I first found out it was a foreclosure, I didn't know what to think. The vinyl flooring left much to be desired, and all the carpet had been removed. But HUD (The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which was selling the home) offered money in an escrow account to replace the carpet. What is escrow anyway? But other than a few simple fixes, the home was in great shape.

Narrowing down the options

Brad's family is in Charlotte and mine is east of Greensboro. We wanted to be close enough to work to save on commuting, but close enough to Charlotte to visit family easily.

My first map search was in Mooresville and Troutman.

The few homes that met my mental picture were out of our price range. On the ride back from visiting our sister paper in Mooresville, I saw a billboard for new homes in Statesville. I visited their Web site as soon as I got home.

The homes were large and beautiful, exactly what my mental picture described. They were also in our price range.

I mentioned it to a few coworkers, and they asked if the builder had a good reputation. I said they did as far as I knew. Then that little imp in my stomach kicked me. I did a Google search and found a message board full of people who say they have bought homes from the same builder. A lot of the complaints seemed legit. Even if they were bogus claims, it was more than I wanted to risk so I scratched the builder off my list and started looking at "used" homes again.

Mooresville and Troutman were out, new construction was out. That left homes in Statesville.

House hunting

With a healthy dose of motivation, where should I begin? (I could have said where do we begin, but my husband lets me take care of all the legwork. Since I almost need to be medicated for my excessive planning, it's healthier for our marriage if I just give him reports every now and then.)

I wanted to see what was available, where it was and what it looked like. I hopped from several real estate Web sites until I landed on a site that had a map function where you can draw where you want to live and it will tell you what's available.

The first time I went to the site, I had no restrictions. I looked at everything. Then I saw an estimated monthly payment tool on each property listing. Yikes! Better set a budget.

There are several online mortgage calculators that will tell you how much you can afford. None of them helped. Some went strictly on gross income. Mortgage companies usually won't allow a loan that takes more than 28 percent of your gross income. So if you make $1,000 a month before taxes, you can't afford a monthly payment of more than $280.

Instead of dealing with all those numbers, I thought I would go the simpler route: I would look for a house with an estimated monthly payment similar to what we pay in rent.

I had several mental pictures of what I wanted my first home to look like. Lots of windows, a small yard, a porch, and hopefully two stories. The real estate Web site didn't have searches for all those options, but at least I could look at photos.

Going beyond dreaming

When I began working in Statesville, I had no idea how long I would be here. I was hired fresh out of college and I was distracted by my September wedding to Brad, a fellow AppState alum and now a member of the R&L sports staff.

But at the time he was working in Lenoir and we needed a place to live.

Hickory was the logical choice. It was a 30-minute commute for both of us. I looked for apartments, finally settling on the quaint Argyle Place apartments in northeast Hickory.

Brad was hired in Statesville later that year, and the Hickory commute suddenly made less sense. Once I moved from second shift to first, we couldn't carpool. The Hickory commute then made absolutely no sense.

But commuting wasn't my only reason to look for our first home. I've always wanted a place of my own. I come from a family of carpenters, so renting took a lot of fun out of living in a place.

After being married for a few months, the idea of some romantic job in a big city didn't seem so glamorous. I just wanted to settle down near our families. As all the pieces fell into place, I knew we needed to start our home hunt.