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| Did I share about our new housing situation? Well, we own a two-bedroom condo, but we haven't moved in yet, because the bathroom and the kitchen needs a gut renovation. Meanwhile, we are living with five other adults and two adorable boys in a four bedroom house, just a few blocks away from our new place. The couple we bought the house with also lives here, and so does a single engaged man. He is soon to marry and his fiancee wants to move in to share their first year of marriage in this home. The other two adults are our close friends, J & T, and the two adorable boys are their's: Z and E. This group, along with two other single women, A and M, comprise the Micah 6 group. It should actually be Micah 6:8. Every community needs something to bind them together, and that's the verse that was decided. It's yet another experiment in community living that my DH and I are having. None of our parents understand why we are choosing to do this, but there must be something in the water here that brainwashes us all to live like this and enjoy doing so!
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| Thank you for being ? Helping me with my homework. Thank you for being pasiont and being nice to me. I also want to tell you sory beacuse I know somtimes I mean you have rughue time with me i apalagise to you. I thank you for wait remember in summr vacations you and mr: gerardo pland to take us to boomers, to a pool, and many more cool places. Thank you fo taking cear of loke we were your own childs. Well i edmire you. Good Bye.
sencirly: Jose
(5th grader at the learning center)
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| Our offer was a complicated one. The property is being sold as a two-family, but we want to convert it to condos at our closing. Legally, you have to own the property in order to convert it, so that meant we had to ask the owner to be a "declarant" on the condo conversion process. It's a lot to ask a complete stranger in such a large financial transaction. Plus, our bid was a lot lower than asking, so to try to make our deal a little sweeter, we wrote up a letter, and asked the agent to present the letter with our offer. Our letter basically stated that we were friends, not developers, who wanted to live together in community. Well, we're not sure what the seller thought about our letter because our offer was just outright rejected. *sigh* That was about two weeks ago. This past week, I was in Boston, looking for more houses w/ our friends, and we had a marathon schedule of two-family homes to look at and open houses to attend. Several exhausting hours later, we found nothing comparable, so we decided to submit another offer on the house, because it hadn't sold yet. This time we increased our offer, and to our surprise, the sellers countered! The game was on! We countered back, and said it was the best that we could do, and after a short deliberation, the seller accepted our offer. We all went to bed giddy that night dreaming of creating a Christian Community Coalition in the neighborhood with sewing bees, canning and cooking gatherings, and dinner parties, and simply ignored the seller's agent warning us that if they got another offer before the seller had a chance to come in to sign the contract the next day, the seller may end up turning down our offer in favor of a better one. Lo and behold! Another offer comes in two hours before the seller is to sign our contract. And it's a higher offer than ours. *sigh* We didn't have a buyer's broker, so even tho' our offer was lower, the seller ended up w/ more money from us than from the other party. Apparently, however, the other couple has more money to put on the table. So, we wait to hear what the seller would do. It's all up to God at this point, and it's out of our hands. An agonizing hour later, we learn that the seller asked if we were the party who had written the letter. The agent says, yes, and so the seller decides to go ahead and just give the property to us! PTL! The papers were signed, and now we are on the road to home ownership and community living. | | |
| One of my favorite verses says (paraphrased), faith is the substance of things hoped for, on evidence not seen. Today, we took a big step of faith and put in an offer in a property we have not yet seen. Since our last trip back east, we have been talking about buying a two-family home with another couple who have become friends of ours. We've known them as acquaintances before, but now are becoming fast friends, as we hope to live together, in community, under one roof.
It's crazy, I know! We are hoping to buy a house that we've only seen in pictures, with a couple that we are only just getting to know... who in their right minds would do something like this?! And according to other friends, encouraging us in this, the place is a dump, in need of a lot of work, but has lots of potential and original Victorian charm. Well, we're not that crazy - we will have separate units. The house has three floors, and we'll live in one, while the other couple lives in the top two floors. We'll share the backyard, and will probably share our car keys, too, because the parking is only tandem in this 100 year old property. I guess this isn't any crazier than having four complete strangers move in with you for an entire year! It seems, however, that the decisions we've made in the past to promote a sense of community has worked out well. So, hopefully, this one will, too.
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