Real Estate

We've been pretty busy around here! With the move just a few months away. We got our house ready to sell in Feb., put it on http://www.militarybyowner.com/. We prayed about it and decided to give for-sale-by-owner a try for a few months. The response has been wonderful, with nearly 600 hits on our home on the one site. We have had several interested in buying and lot's of offers to rent. Most military families want to rent right now and we feel strongly about selling and using the equity we have in our home for the next home and during med. school. We know God will provide a buyer! We have one more week as FSBO, before we call our realtor. FSBO has been a calmer way to enter the real estate world. Most interests have been from out of state, so there is lot's of emailing, talking and plenty of time to get the house perfectly clean before they come visit. We've had several showings. One family, the only local family, that has come by are still interested and have called back. They were on the beginning of their search and haven't made up their minds. The other family that remains interested, is out of Washington. They would love to buy it, but have a property in Colorado that they need to sell or find another renter for. They are really busy and haven't found the time to come see it. We would love for one of these families to buy our home, but we can't wait much longer. We move in June (Kyle at the beginning of July) and we have already purchased our home in San Antonio.

We do love our home in NE and hope it sells soon!

During all the work to sell our home, we had continued an extensive web search for our home in TX. About a month ago I found our home online and told Kyle "I found it" (that's not the first time I've said that). It met our needs, was in the perfect location (haven't found many), and was in our budget. A new home, priced much lower than the others in the neighborhood, I was quickly concerned in wouldn't stay on the market for another month (when we were going to go purchase a home in SA). I didn't say much to Kyle, but after a day or 2 of looking at it he asked if I thought we should make an offer. I of course, said yes! I was content with not looking further and had complete trust in my Mom and our realtor's opinion of the home. They both agreed it was a great house- that's right we bought a house without setting foot in it! After a long week of dealing with banks and loan stuff, we finally put our offer in on a Fri. night. We were excited that we were the first to put an offer in and were ready to negotiate. There was quite a bit of disappointment Sat. night when we found out another offer had been made on the house, after ours. No negotiation, we each got to put in our best offer and the seller would choose. That was a very stressful Sun. God was definitely teaching patients and trust in him. I let it go, even started looking for another home, until we got word late Sun. night that it was ours!!! We paid a bit more that we wanted too (have no clue what the other offer was), but felt like we didn't over pay. We are so excited!

Our home in San Antonio! It's hard to stay focused on the home we need to sell, too much fun to look to the future and our new life in our new home! We feel so blessed to be in the home we've been in for the past 4 years and feel so blessed to spend the next part of our life in this house! God is good and we look forward to sharing this blessing with all! As most of you know we love having visitors and hosting parties and having people over!

A few pictures of two of our favorite rooms! We were thrilled it is so open, just like our current home. What can't be seen in the kitchen is the double oven and walk-in pantry along with more cabinets- a few things our current kitchen could use:)

So that's what's been going on in the Johnston home lately and why I've been horrible about blogging. Real Estate has certainly been bittersweet for us lately, but God is GREAT and we look forward to what he has in store for us (I am definitely ready to move on). Now off to clean and get this house ready for an Open House Sun. 2-4!