This is the amazing story of how God answered our prayers to provide
a new home for us
Make a Wish
When Adair and I married in March of 2001, we moved into a 1,200
square foot condo, which was just about the right size for us. But
as any parent can attest, having kids changes that. After the birth
of our third child, we found ourselves looking in vain for places to
put things--dresses, onesies, headbands, and shoes were
everywhere. That's not to say we were ungrateful; quite to the
contrary, we had it really good in our condo! Thanks to Adair's hard
work as the property manager for the condo association, we didn't
have to pay a penny for monthly dues which basically meant that we
got "free" water, garbage and sewer--a great deal. But with each
passing day, both of us felt more and more that our days in that
place were coming to an end. So we put our heads together and
drafted a "wish list" of things we needed or wanted.and then figured
out how much we could comfortably afford. When all was written down
and agreed upon, we started praying that God would provide a house
in His perfect timing that would match our Wish List.
List in hand, we began our epic search for a new home. Every night,
Adair faithfully poured over the listings, e-mailing me those she
thought interesting. I rejected most out of hand, but every once in
a while I'd see something promising, and most Friday nights and some
Saturdays, we'd go house hunting. But despite the breadth of our
search, I never saw anything that was even remotely
attractive. Given our budget, literally everything we saw for quite
some time was either a rambler or a '70s split-level. As if we were
the unwitting subjects of a hidden camera prank, we went from house
to house and saw the same things: dropped ceilings in the kitchen
and showers, tiny-to-nonexistent master bathrooms and lower floors
that definitely were not made with a seven-footer in mind. We saw so
many homes that had so many of the same flaws, they'd haunt me in my
dreams...shudder.
What made matters worse was that we didn't even know where to
look. Neither Adair nor I are from this region, so we basically just
drew a virtual radius around downtown Seattle and say "No farther
than this"--my commute from Kirkland was already 45 minutes to an
hour and it's about all I could tolerate.
The very first house (a split level) we looked was on a good-sized
big lot, but what the listing didn't state was that it was basically
on the edge of a ravine--the back yard was completely unusable. To
make matters worse, it seemed to be on the edge of civilization. The
second house, another split level, was literally just a few hundred
feet up the road and sat on about 3/4 of an acre, but it had a
short, steep driveway and not one but two huge decks that
immediately made me cringe as I imagined the time and effort that
would be required to maintain those monsters. "No thanks" I said,
and we drove off.
Discovering "The House"
Fast forward about a year and a half.
Deja vu all over again
In one of her nearly nightly e-mails to me (she'd send me listings
via e-mail even though we were right next to each other so I
wouldn't have to read over her shoulder), there was a listing
that seemed somewhat intriguing:
Motivated Seller! Priced $100k below appraisal. Great Buy! Great
House! Set on .96 acres. The Kitchen has been completely redone in
maple, granite and stainless. It features a large walk in pantry
and breakfast bar island. The entire upstairs has new bamboo
floors. The Master Suite overlooks the park like back yard and is
huge with an oversize closet & new bathroom inc. radiant heated
tile floors, a large shower and separate water closet. All new
windows, doors, floors & roof. Northshore Schools
At $560k, it was *just* out of what we'd agreed was our comfortable
ceiling, but with the softening market, we thought that maybe
there'd be some "wiggle room" on the price. As I looked at the
listing closely, I didn't see anything that was a big "No way, Jose"
nor did I yell "YES! Finally!" The shy acre lot and basketball court
were intriguing, but as we'd both become somewhat jaded by the all
the less-than-forthcoming listings, neither of us were ready to get
our hopes up. But we called Dorece Davies,
our real estate agent and set up an appointment anyway.
As we turned off the main road, Adair said "Hey, wait a minute. Isn't
this the road where that very first house was that we looked at?"
"Huh?" I'd long since forgotten.
"Yeah, look--there's the house with the 3/4 acre lot and the big
double decks in the back! Looks like someone bought it. The very
first house we looked at is just down there on the left!"
"Hrmm. Wow, I guess this place isn't quite as near the edge of
civilization as I'd first thought." It did seem a lot closer than
some of the other houses we'd looked at out as far as Echo
Lake.
First Impressions
The Back Yard
As we pulled off of the gravel easement road onto the asphalt
driveway, I was favorably impressed by all of the 100 foot trees all
around. It felt very "country"--secluded yet not isolated and there
was actually room to walk between the houses. We got there before
our agent so I thought I'd walk around the house and peek in the
first floor windows. As I walked around the tool shed, I started to
see the back yard and when I got to the corner of the house and
could survey the entire back yard--the gently sloped grassy lawn,
full basketball court and the stream cutting across the property--I
got what the great "prophet" Don Henley once
described as a "peaceful,
easy feeling." I could all but hear the Holy Spirit saying to me
"This is it, Dan. This is where you're going
to live."
As I continued to walk back, I caught side of a wooden structure
about 15' tall just across the creek--a two-story fort. The place
just screamed "FUN FOR THE KIDS." It stirred in me fond memories of
the football field-length back yard of my childhood home
on the Kankakee River, and it still brings a smile to my face to
recall those first moments of discovery as I imagined our kids
romping around in the creek, playing cowboys and indians in the
woods and as they get older, inviting all their friends over to play
hoops and empty out our fridge. :-) I walked the full length of the
court back to the house and up the other side where sat a
five-tiered garden. Wow, and finally a place
where Adair can grow her own vegetables! By the time I'd
gotten back to the front, I was trying very hard to contain my
enthusiasm. Dorece,
our agent, had just arrived, so we went inside.
Inside
Things were looking good as we entered. It was still a typical
"stairs up, stairs down" small entry way that all uncustomized split
levels have, but at least the stairs were done in bamboo. When we
got to the top of the stairs, I was impressed by the vaulted
ceiling, twin skylights and a wall of windows--lots of light and
headroom. When we saw the kitchen, my jaw just about dented the
bamboo flooring--granite, maple and stainless. This can't be right. This place can't possibly be
$560k. The second bedroom upstairs was formed by joining the
two tiny bedrooms that all three-bedroom split levels have
upstairs--I could stand in the middle of the room and even with my
7'3" wingspan, I couldn't touch the walls! It reminded me a lot of a
bedroom that my dad and a couple of his brothers used to share when
they were growing up, and where I spent many nights with my two
youngest uncles. There was even a walk-in closet for the boys!
Things got even better in "ginormous" master bedroom. It had more
than enough room for our California king sized bed, and the closet
was so big I again couldn't touch the walls. I laughed out loud as I
thought about how insanely large that closet is. Actually, it still
gives me a bit of a chuckle when I walk in there. It's crazy big.
"I can see us living here."
We spent a lot of time that first visit just walking to and fro, and
during our visit, we got the story on the house--how the sellers got
into a bidding war to buy it, gutted it and remodeled it, and then
how the Mrs., a Regional VP of HR for a Fortune 100 company, was
transferred to the midwest before the couple ever got a chance to
live in the home. I'm not even sure they got to see the finished
product in person. Both Adair and I cringed at how sick it must have
made them to spend all that time and money on remodeling a house and
never get to enjoy it.
As we all gathered at the top of the stairs, I said "Dorece, in the
year and a half that we've been looking at houses, this is the
only one that I can honestly see us living in." It was a
beautiful house and was priced really well, but nonetheless it was
still not yet within our grasp. So we left and decided to put the
house on our list of favorites to watch.
Our new "Gold Standard"
The next two months of house hunting were particularly eye opening
(or sickening, depending upon whom you ask :-). With every house we
saw, my wife and I would always ask the question "How does this compare to the Canyon Park
house?" The answer to the question was usually something like
"Well, this house is about $15k more, has one-third of the property,
is on a rocky slope, and it's ugly inside and out." Or maybe "It's
about the same price, and has the same amount of land, but it's
another 20 minutes farther east...and it's ugly." The Canyon Park
house had become our "gold standard" and like a can't-do-wrong older
sibling, every other house we saw got compared to it...and came up
short. We went back to see it at least three more times with Dorece,
twice with friends who have experience in construction and
assessments to give us their gut feelings. We even went back a
couple of times without our agent just to walk around and make sure
we weren't imagining things. Even though the floor plan wasn't our
ideal and we weren't really looking for a remodeled home (what with
the way small children are prone to destroy pretty much everything
in their path), there was clearly nothing else that compared to
it. So we decided to throw our bid into the ring.
Buying the House
The First Offer
We learned that the house originally went on the market $740k and
that the price had been dropped seven times in the roughly seven
months it'd been on the market, but that they'd received no
offers. We also estimated that the sellers were losing about $4,000
per month between their mortgage and maintenance. Adair once asked
me "Why do you think the place hasn't sold? It's a great price and a
nice house! Is there something wrong with it that everyone else sees
but that we don't?" I could only answer her question with a
question: "Because it's ours?" It's all that came to mind as I
thought about how I felt when I first saw the backyard in person. "I
think that maybe God has set this house aside for us."
We agonized over what to offer, but figuring that "We can always go
up, but we can never go down" we offered $520k, contingent upon the
sale of our condo. A couple of days later, the counter-offer came
back: $560k, minus $5k to defray closing costs. Seeing as how the
sellers weren't budging (we couldn't blame them), we had to decline
the counter-offer. After all, it's not the closing costs that
hurt--it's that monthly mortgage payment for the next 15 years. We
resumed praying and hunting.
The Second Offer
A couple of weeks later, after doing some more number crunching (and
seeing some more underwhelming properties) we figured that since
units in our building have always sold very quickly, we could be
reasonably sure that we could go non-contingent on the sale of our
condo. So we made another offer: $530k, non-contingent on the sale
of our condo.
The response we got back took the wind out of our sails. We were
told that the listing had expired and that the sellers were renewing
with a new agent who promised to launch what was described to us as
an "aggressive marketing campaign." So we sat and waited for the
house to come back on the market. After about two weeks, Adair said
to me "I bet I know what's going to happen--they're going to bring
the house back on the market with a bigger price tag." It didn't
make sense to me, but sure enough, three weeks later, it
reappeared with infinitely better photos and sporting a heftier
$574,500 price tag--$14,500 more than before.
A Bold Prayer
After a few days of "stressing," trying to figure out if we could
find some creative ways to afford a better offer more, I came home
after work and said to Adair "You know, I get the distinct
impression that God's just telling us to 'wait' on this one. He
obviously hasn't said 'yes' yet because we're not living there, but
He hasn't said 'no' either because the house still hasn't sold and
they're not getting any other offers." Apparently, the Holy Spirit
had been having the same conversation with her that day because she
said "You know, it's funny you say that--just today I was thinking
the exact same thing!" I'm embarrassed to admit that that feeling
didn't last very long, though--a couple of days later, we started
getting nervous at the thought of "blowing it" and missing out on a
great house. So one night after the kids were in bed, I led my wife
in this prayer:
Heavenly Father, If this is not the place you want us to live,
then we ask that you sell the house quickly and get [the
sellers] out from under this burden they're carrying. Lord, it's
got to be painful for them to have to spend all this money every
month for a house they're not even living in. So please bring a
buyer quickly if this isn't the place for us.
But if this is the place where you want us to live, I
pray that you would have the sellers contact us and offer
to take us up on our last offer. Lord, we want Your name to be
glorified above all else and I can't think of a better way that
we might bring glory your name by welcoming people into our home
and saying "Let me tell you the amazing story of how God gave us
this house!" Father, bring glory to yourself in this
situation. In Jesus' name was ask this, Amen.
We prayed this way just about every night and I also brought this
request before the Lord during my commute both to and from work--at
least three times a day. Day after day, we prayed for God's clear
guidance, and trusted that He would answer in His perfect timing.
The Answer
About six weeks later, my phone rang while I was in my weekly Bible
study. I let it go to voicemail and then discretely checked it as
our pastor talked on. It was Adair:
You're going to be very happy! Dorece just called and said that the
[seller] called her and said that he'd just fired his agent and
could now afford our last offer of $530k, non-contingent if we're
still interested.
If we're still interested?!? Of course we're still interested!!!
The Inspection
Going into the inspection, Adair and I were praying that nothing
major would turn up--that everything would be routine. As with most
home inspections, though, our
inspector Randy Navarro turned up a laundry list of "issues" he felt
worth commenting on. Among them were about a half-dozen items, all
weather or water-related, that I felt were significant enough to
trouble the seller. I talked over the inspection report with Randy
and he concurred with my severity assessment, so Adair and I began
praying that the seller would be amenable to fixing all of the
issues and this wouldn't turn ugly.
God came through again. The seller said "No problem. I'll take care
of everything. Don't worry about it." When Dorece relayed this
message to me, she said "I don't believe it--this does not
happen."
"Well, Dorece, you better get used to it, because we're a praying
family over here!"
All in all, the seller dropped over $5,000 to fix all of the issues
I asked to have fixed. We all were completely "floored" to see how
this man and his wife chose to treat us after all they went through
with this house. I don't know if they've ever been an answer to
someone's prayers before, but they are now, and it is our prayer now
that God will pour out His richest blessings on them for the way
they treated (and continue to treat) us.
Back to that List
You might be interested to know what was on the Wish List and Adair
and I put together and how our house stacks up against what we were
praying for. The list wasn't prioritized--it was just thrown
together as we thought of both needs and nice-to-haves. Below, the
list items are in bold and how the house stacks up against
the list is detailed in italics:
- Natural gas
- No, but was only a "nice-to-have" to begin with
- Level, unwooded lot (0.25 acre +)
-
Mostly level, slightly sloped to the creek, 0.96 acres, about a
third of which is heavily wooded...great for making trails!
- No dropped ceilings (8' minimum), vaulted a plus
-
Mostly...the ceilings in the bedrooms upstairs are just shy of
8', but the only place I have to duck in this house are the
standard-height doorways. The ceiling in the living room and
dining area upstairs is vaulted.
- Full-sized master shower or tub
-
Two sinks, and a crazy big shower about as big as an average
elevator car
- Open floor plan (common areas)
- Yes
- Level driveway
-
Mostly level. The idea was to have an additional area the kids
could play in, and our boys *love* to start up by the gravel
and roll down on their scooters into the garage. The neighbor
frequently come over and share in the fun. :-)
- Dedicated master bath
-
Yes, with dedicated sinks for each of us, too!
- Two-car garage
-
Yes, great "man space" *and* it's got a tool shed!
- No galley kitchen (must be walk through/have two ways in & out)
- Yes, with an island no less!
- Forced-air heading + cooling
- Yes, heat pump *and* air conditioning
- Fruit trees (cherry, apple)
-
We have one apple tree with three different types of apples, also
has salmonberry on the property and some blackberries on the
easement road
- 2,000 ft3 livable space
-
The house was expanded to about 3,000 square feet, and even
after dedicating about 510 square feet for a mother-in-law
apartment, this is still a "yes."
- Not on busy street, walkable neighborhood
-
We're off of an easement road connected to a quiet, dead-end
street
- Good visibility from kitchen to back yard
- Yes. We can easily see our kids fighting on the basketball court! :-)
- Fenced yard a plus
-
Partial fencing on the North, full fence on the West, but
really not necessary thanks to all the trees
- Close proximity to hiking/biking trails or parks
-
We're about a 4 or 5 mile ride to the Burke-Gilman trail
Since we've moved in, we've had quite a few people over for
barbecues, and with each group of visitors, I get to relive the joy
of telling this story and giving glory to the awesome God who hears
the prayers of His people and answers them according to His good
pleasure.
To God be the glory, great things He has done.
Next: How God used a friend's generosity, a torn-up driveway, and an
enthusiastic five-year-old to avert a small disaster two days after
we moved in...
