Our new house!

Well, we did it. We bought a house. Yes, we’re officially crazy to be doing this with a newborn. But it was too good to pass up. The story starts just before Kaya was born, with a house popping up on Funda (the Dutch real estate website), the next door neighbour to a house we’d seriously considered and had seen during the open house day in October and had just made an appointment to see again at the beginning of January when it sold out from under us. But I knew that house since I’d looked at the listing many, many times trying to decide if it was for us, wanting to be in that neighbourhood, with its nice houses, good schools, greenness and closeness to the centre, but not falling in love with the house itself because it was just OK and lacked soul. So I when I saw the house next door come up I wasn’t too discouraged by the fact that it was filled with books and dirty. I knew what it could look like and how we could make it more than OK by fixing it up ourselves. And it seemed to have soul. So, as soon as I saw the listing I thought, now, there’s our house and we called and made an appointment for the first showing day two weeks later.

In between the making of the appointment and the appointment itself, Kaya was born, so at 6 days old she took her first outing to see this house. Of course, the two nieces of the woman who had lived in the house were charmed by her, and I think they thus wanted us to live there. It turned out that there were 10,000 or so books in the house and not much else, the legacy from the owner for the last 35 years, a single older woman (with cats) who had been a lecturer in medieval French with wide ranging interests. With her death, the house passed to the two sisters. We saw the house with all the books still there and stayed interested. The sisters had actually taken the listing off Funda after a couple days, wanting to clear the books out and clean it before listing it seriously. We continued talking to them and made an appointment to see the now cleared out house on March 13, with the intention of making a bid. And that’s what we did. After some negotiating, we came to agreement, and on this past Monday, the 21st, after going over the contract with a realtor, having the house inspected and meeting with a mortgage advisor, we met to sign the contract. So now, assuming we our financing comes through by May 20th, we have a house. And we don’t foresee any problems getting the financing.

So, linked here is a photo album containing three tours – the first as it now is, the second with all the books and the third of the house next door (the last two are photos nicked from internet caches). There are also maps and floor plans. And yeah, for you North Americans, this is really small, 105 m² (1130 ft²), but fairly normal for here. So, click on the photo for the album (our house is the white one):

Oh, and yeah, I’ll try to get more pictures of Kaya up in the next few days. I know, I’ve been very lax.