Welcome home!

Our search for a place to call home started three years ago in a different city. My husband Andrew and I were newly married, and just moved to Chicago from Santa Fe, NM where Andrew is from. I got a job offer in Chicago and always wanted to live in a big city, so we took the opportunity. I'm from Michigan, so it was driving distance to my family and we thought it would be great. Well, a few months of the coldest winters where the Polar Vortex decided to spend some time, we quickly decided Chicago wasn't going to be our long term home.

We had been exploring the country to pick a city we both could connect with and decided Portland, OR was where we wanted to land. This city has so much to offer from the beautiful scenery, delicious food and unique spirit. So the house hint began, but little did we know we were entering one of the hottest markets in the country. Houses were often listed on a Thursday, had an open house on the weekend and had multiple offers by Sunday night, many cash. It was hard to compete in this kind of market and we had three failed offers to show for it.

I was consistent with checking the latest listings and found a house that didn't have much marketing about its sale. No open house was scheduled, so we visited with our realtor and put in an offer we felt might be a winner. At this point, we were a little desensitized to the process, so we weren't unreasonably nervous waiting for the results, but this time we had the winning offer!

Welcome to our house!