Our {latest!} Fort McMurray Real Estate Adventure...

So...ya...we bought a house. 

Well, I'm probably jinxing it because all the conditions haven't been met yet, but it's *thisclose* so it's probably going to happen. And we're too excited to keep quiet about it anymore!

Obviously it's a new build, so we hope to move by the end of June. it's close to being done. Part of our contract is that the basement be made into a legal rental suite {EVERYONE does that here in Fort McMurray to offset the RIDICULOUS house prices!}.

Getting to the point where we actually purchased this house was quite the adventure. We saw no less than FIFTY houses of all sizes {1200 sq ft to 3300 sq ft in vast range of prices}. 

You KNOW that I love real estate, so I've been perusing MLS since Big A was offered the job here. I got the know the Fort McMurray real estate market pretty well. On the very day when we qualified for our mortgage, we set out to buy a specific house that day, only to realize it SOLD... that very day! It had been sitting on the market for 5 months and it SOLD the day we want to offer on it!

Unfazed, because I truly believe all things happen for a reason, we found another perfect house. We wanted to sleep on it, so we held off putting an offer for a day, only to find out that it too had SOLD within that short window! Of all the luck!

Soon we found another house -- which was going to be an exact replica of the first house I set my heart on.  But for some reason, I just wasn't sure I wanted to put an offer, so we slept on it again.

The next morning, my amazing Fort McMurray real estate agent {and now my soul sister!} texted me that she found the PERFECT house for me, in the neighbourhood I wanted, for a much more reasonable price. No catch. Seriously.

 As soon as we saw it, we knew THIS was the house. It was in the middle of construction, with only dry wall and a few doors, so we had to use our imagination. To make it more challenging, ALL the finishings had already been chosen and I had no real idea what they were. So once we got clarification on what the big ticket items looked like {cabinets, countertop, tile, etc.}, we took the plunge.

We are so glad we did. Look what we discovered when we came back from Ontario this week! The tile floors and kitchen cabinets are in!

Luckily, our builder is AWESOME and agreed to let us choose the hardwood, carpet, backsplash tile and basement flooring & countertops. It's so exciting to be able to customize this awesome house on these important aspects of our home.

And wait till you see what we picked! We're taking a bit of a risk, but I LOVE it! It's GORGEOUS!

One thing that we really love about buying THIS home in particular is that it isn't ALL done. We're not paying for someone's design/decorating/customization. 

We are going to be able to really make this house OUR HOME. 

Bring on the DIY! Did I mention the garage is HEATED?!?!?!

Stay tuned for our more updates on our new home!