Buying my first house!

The thing I always tell brides is that the preferred vendors of Simply Love Studio are vendors that I would use for my wedding or my personal needs and it’s no different when it came to buying a house.

I have been in Lexington 5 years in August, when I moved here, I had no future plans per se and definitely didn’t see myself buying a house, but here I am! I sent Nick Ratliff with Nick Ratliff Realty Team an email, our preferred realtor and told him I was interested in meeting with him to talk about buying a house.  Once everything was taken care of with finances, I sat down with Nick.

Going into this meeting, I thought since I had looked at houses on lbar for months that I knew everything I needed to know about buying a house, boy, was I wrong.  My first meeting with Nick was all education, which is a lot of what we do here with Bridal School.  There are so many things you don’t know that you need to know.  I was literally pumped when I left that meeting, I did know what the house buying process was after it and I did know what all of those big words meant on a contract.

I had a few months before my apartment lease was up, so I wasn’t in a huge hurry to buy.  I spent several Sunday afternoons driving around town to different open houses on my own.  I don’t even know if that’s what normal people do, but I felt seeing things in person and walking through by myself would help me decide on what I liked and what I didn’t like.  I found several that I really liked that did not have open houses scheduled, so I emailed Nick those to schedule a visit to them.

The first one we went to was off of Richmond Road area, it was a townhouse style I had previously rented.  We had not been in the house 5 minutes and Nick was telling me things I needed to look for and things to consider, when someone knocks on the door and opens it.  Mr. Rude Neighbor wants to let us know about visitor parking because we aren’t parked correctly, blah, blah, blah, he was so rude that when Nick came back I was like okay, I’m ready to go.  At that point it didn’t matter about the house, I knew I didn’t want to be neighbors with that guy.  So, sellers – be cautious of your neighbors, they could be the reason your house isn’t selling because I actually really did like that house.

Next up we headed over to another part of town and looked at two condos and a townhouse on the same street.  I didn’t particularly want to live in this area, but I liked the houses. During my first meeting with Nick I gave him a highlighted map of the streets that I would consider living between, but he encouraged me to venture out just to be safe, so I did.  As we were walking to the townhouse there was another townhouse literally across the street from it, so Nick made a call to the realtor on the sign and got us in that one too immediately.

I liked a few I saw there and he reached out to the HOA to get some information because my one thing I would not give up was a fenced in yard for my dog and these needed to be completed.  Nick was then going on vacation so he introduced me to Betsy Powell, an agent that works with him and she would be working with me while he was on vacation.  She is the sweetest thing, she was perfect for me to work with. I felt like I had known Betsy all my life.  There was another street that had three houses on it I wanted to see, so Betsy secured those appointments.  I really liked one of them, it fit my budget, what I was looking for, close to the Studio, fenced in yard, I was sold.  At that point, Betsy was heading out of town for a wedding, so I scheduled a tour on a Sunday so both of my parents could come up to see the house before I made an offer.

That was the day of the SEC basketball tournament, that Kentucky was playing in.  My site visit with Nick scheduled at tip off time.  Nick never said a word about it and I didn’t realize it until we were already there and I felt SOOO bad.  So, my parents didn’t like that house I had picked out.  There was an open house at a condo back on the other side of town in the neighborhood I had previously looked at, so I took my parents to see it since they were in town. That particular one was a hot mess.

So I took my parents back to show them the townhouse that I had really liked the day that Nick and I walked the neighborhood. I might have text Nick about 1:30 and asked if we could see it ASAP, remember, this was a Sunday, he was so kind and gracious and showed it to us within 2 hours.  So, we put an offer in on it.

I worked with Betsy on the closing because she had just sold a property on that street with that HOA.  She asked for the seller to cover things I would have never thought to have asked for and saved me about $1100.

I have no idea how people buy or sell a house without a realtor, I asked the most stupid questions you could imagine, at all hours of the day and they were never rude or treated me like I was stupid.  It was my first home and I had no idea what to expect.  I could not be more gracious for the opportunity to work with Nick and Betsy and would recommend them to ANYONE looking to buy or sell a home in Lexington!

Here’s a before and after of my living room. xo