Hello friends!  I have some exciting news… Dave and I bought our first HOME!!!! 🙂 We are so incredibly excited but as with everything we do, we seem to do it in not the most traditional fashion (ie, getting married in a hurricane with the entire city shut down… a story for another time!).  We are still living in Stuttgart and we bought in Charleston, our favorite city in the world, where we moved from, and where we will return after our stint in Germany.

I admit it is a little odd that we bought while still overseas… but hey, when the perfect opportunity knocks, we jump!!  We will keep it rented out for the next year and will have a home to come back to in 2020.  It honestly couldn’t have worked out better!!!

We always knew we would come back to Charleston and had our pulse on the real estate market for the past year, receiving MLS listings within our search criteria.  We decided to do this because we knew our requirements were pretty narrow and would basically need a unicorn to come available.  We had our hearts set on living downtown Charleston. I had previously lived downtown for about five years and we lived together in Mt. Pleasant for two years, but really missed and craved being able to WALK everywhere like we used to.  Having to get in the car to go anywhere and everywhere is just not what we wanted, and I absolutely love the vibe in Charleston.  I also LOVE historical houses and would not be able to live in a new house… squeaky original hardwoods make me swoon.  I love imagining all of the history behind objects, and houses are no different.  Thankfully there are plenty of old houses in Charleston.  🙂

With that being said, downtown Charleston houses are very tricky!!! If they are kept up and large enough, they are almost always out of our price range, and if they’re in our price range, they are usually run down (remember they are all old), or have a very small square footage, or both.  The other factor is location – as with any city, we of course want to be in a good, safe area.  Thankfully we know downtown very well and still have tons of friends in the area so we have kept up with the city growth and changes.

Back in February our house came on the market and we scheduled a viewing the next day.  Our realtor did a virtual walkthrough with us on video and we had two friends there in person.  That was a Friday, and we put our offer in on Sunday.  Yes, we made an offer sight unseen… and a lot of people thought we were crazy!!!  We did have floor plans which I prefer to work with.  We also wanted to get the inspection done so we could see if there were major problems with the home.  If problems existed, we would back out no problem.  Otherwise, it seemed perfect to us.

So after a long two months, the house is officially ours!!! It was interesting buying a home from afar, but we both said it helped to make our decisions based on facts and not emotion!  After each phase or check list, we would re-evaluate from Germany and say to each other, “does this still make sense?” and “do we still want to move forward to the next step?”.  We kept saying “yes” each time.  We flew back for a week before the due-diligence phase ended to finally see it in person and wrap up negotiations.  We were busy every day with home meetings but loved everything we saw.  Now here we are, homeowners!

Our home is a Charleston Single built in the late 1800s and has a lot of original house still in tact.  Original floor plan, stairwell, hardwood floors upstairs with newer hardwoods downstairs, original doors and door hardware (oh my gosh this makes my heart melt!).  The square footage is large, we have a cute little backyard, double piazzas (!), it’s in a spectacular neighborhood, and we could afford it.  A true unicorn!  We will renovate some next year before we move in to create a master bedroom and redo the kitchen, but are happy to keep the historical fabric in-tact as much as we can!

When we heard the news that the closing went through, it was around 23:00 (11:00pm) and we were already in bed!  Our phones buzzed and we jumped to check it – the house was ours!  We couldn’t let the occasion pass us, so we got out of bed and popped some champagne in our PJs!  Home buying living abroad. 🙂

So there you have it, guys!  We are super excited for our first ever home!!! We look forward to moving back, making it ours, growing and raising our family here, and just living our lives back in Charleston!

xx