God is So So Good

This is the story of how God provided a home for us.  It is a long and probably boring story, but I hope it will give you some insight into looking for a place in Perth

Since the last entry, it has been a journey of faith and prayer second guessing and desperate begging for God to help us!!

For the last three months, we had been spending every weekend going to Home Opens and every weekday searching for listed houses we might like. We had a budget that restricted us to certain parts of Perth and did not even bother looking at prime areas as that would just be much too expensive. 

Well, to be honest, I  didn't like any of the locations we had been searching around because I just found them much too ulu (deserted) for me.  Of course, this was only because I've only been here for  five months and am only familiar with areas around my university, my rented place, church, and town.  Any other part of Perth just seemed very foreign.  The two houses we put down offers on were also not in the ideal locations, to me, because it would take me ages to get to uni or town, but we thought that was all we could afford.

Thankfully (now), those offers got flatly rejected by the sellers.  Of course, when it happened then, we had to lick some small wounds and wonder if we should have increased our offer or go with what we believed was the value of the houses.  There was really a lot of self doubt and each time we made a decision, we had nothing really to go on except that we had committed this search to God and that He was smarter than us.

Neither of us had much experience in real estate, with me being a total foreigner, and Mr Bauer being practically a tourist himself, and while we did try our best to do some proper research googling, we could never be very sure if we knew what we were doing.  

Anyway, as mentioned in my previous post, we were on route to yet another disappointing Home Open (It was probably the worst one! They posted 2 bathrooms, but one of them was located OUTSIDE the house!!! ??!!) when we spotted a tiny sign showing a Home Open in the prestigious and sought after Murdoch Chase area.  We decided to just take a look for fun because we definitely could not afford something here.  It was very spacious, with large bedrooms and a huge back yard.  The only problem was that it was not furnished, but that was perfect for me because I would love to be able to design the interior myself!  (Mr Bauer would disagree, because he likes to be able to just move in.)  When Doug, the agent selling the house passed us the price guide, we were like meh.  It was completely out of our price range, as expected.  In fact, when Mr Bauer told him what we were prepared to pay, he almost had to scoff before telling us that that would probably not be considered by the owners.  Yes, house hunting in Perth is a very humbling experience.

I don't know what exactly happened in the next day, but somehow this much-too-expensive house was still on our minds and Mr Bauer, specifically, couldn't stop talking about it.  My practical side came out at this point and I just one-ear-in, one-ear-out to pacify him, but apparently, he had done some research on this area after seeing the house and told me excitedly that it was actually a VERY GOOD BUY in terms of value for money, location, investment etc. etc. and some other financial stuff that was too boring for me to remember. 

Anyway, the next day, we came up with a figure to offer.  It was about $50,000 less than what the owners expected, but that was really all we could afford.  The agent accepted our offer and told us that he will let us know what the owner thought.  We waited in agony for the next 48 hours before receiving a call from Doug, who annoyingly could not tell us over the phone but needed us to come down to his office the next day.  

We kept praying for God's will to be done.

The next day, while in the car, just before going to see Doug, we decided that if the owners counter-offered with an increase in $5000, we would be VERY HAPPY (jumping for joy type), if they increased by $10,000 we would not be jumping for joy, but we would still accept it.  And with heavy hearts, we promised each other that if it went any higher, we would both accept that it was not the house God wants for us and go back to hunting.

To our wonderful joy, Doug told us that the owners would like just $5000 more.  My jaw literally dropped.  I had to pull the offer papers towards us to make sure he was right.  Mr Bauer almost could not keep his poker face and flashed me a tiny smile.  

Being two people who were crazy in love, we thought that that was the end of it and the house would be ours once we got our finance approval sorted.  Having gone to many Home Opens and left our contact details in several places, we got approached by a Mortgage Broker who wanted to help us to find the best loan rates for the house.  We were probably too overjoyed that we naively and lazily went ahead with him without doing more research.  He presented us with the latest bank rates and told us that NAB was the lowest and that we should go with NAB.  He was also super confident that we would get the loan based on our stats and kept buttering us up saying the "banks would jump at us".    We really thought everything was alright and we would have no problems getting the requested loan amount approved.  He really made us believe that we did not have a thing to worry about.

FOUR days later, we got a call from this broker telling us the horrible news that NAB had rejected our loan application because of some inflexibility they had regarding documents needed.  We were obviously upset and thought that it was now over for us, that no bank would want us because we simply could not provide the required document.  My six sense only kicked in when the broker sent us a text saying "nothing can be done.  there is no other option.  so what are you going to do?"  I was quite taken aback by that text.  What do you mean "what are we going to do?"  Isn't it his job to give us more options?  Even if the major banks wouldn't lend us (yet to be proven at that point), surely you can find independent lenders or give us some other options???

I told Mr Bauer to screw him and we decided to look for our own lender.  But we didn't have much time.  According to Perth ruling, buyers only had about a couple of weeks to get finance approval before the house would be put up for offer again and it takes time to redo all the paper work, and wait for approval.  And that stupid agent had already wasted some of that time.  The next couple of days we were just emailing lenders and trolling forums to try and get some direction.  On top of this, both of us had final assignments to hand in!  It was quite a stressful time, but thank God, Mr Bauer managed to get a contact from Westpac who was willing to help us.

Not only did he give us a solution to our missing document problem, he revealed that Westpac's rates were MUCH lower than the NAB one that idiot broker offered!  He even threw in the Black Altitude Credit Card with 40,000 bonus points that could be used as Frequent Flyer miles!!!  When we were searching for a credit card, we could not even consider the Black because it was just way too expensive and we thought we did not meet the criteria.  Needless to say, we were very thankful and could only hope that Westpac would approve our loan in time for the offer and acceptance period.  

And...

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Just seven hours ago, we got a call from Westpac informing us that 

Hurray!! Our loan has been approved!!!  

 

Leaving things with God has helped us to get things we originally thought were impossible for our current position - a home in a fantastic location (It is a walk to Murdoch University!!!), a low low interest rate on the loan and a great credit card that can save us travel money!  We are absolutely thankful for his tender mercies to us, even though we had doubt in our hearts.  Indeed, Jesus is our Great High Priest who perfects our imperfect prayers to God the Father.  All we had to do was pray!