For I Know the Plans I Have for You

In February of 2009, my coworker, Helen, suggested I consider buying a house. I went back to my office and looked at some houses online. One home in the area was having an open house that next Sunday, so I left church and headed in that direction. I pulled up in front of the house; actually, I drove by 3 times before I had the guts to go in. I don't like being grilled or followed by salespeople, and since I wasn't sure I was ready to buy, I was nervous that the agent inside would pressure me to buy. I liked the home, so she offered to work with me and suggested I take some steps to get preapproved. I was preapproved for my magic number, and it was $20,000 less than what the house was listed for. I felt like I needed to hold off on going forward with the search. I still had 6 months left in my lease, so I'd have to break that and still pay the rent unless they rented it right away. I put the brakes on that process and went on with life.

Fast forward to this past June. I was visiting my friend Jaimi, and we were talking about the tax credit for first time home buyers, the record-low interest rates available to buyers at the time, and why it makes sense to own rather than rent. I went home and the desire to find a home was renewed.

I reconnected with the realtor I met in February and saw, I would guess, 20 houses or so in person this summer. I looked at hundreds online. I made an offer on one house, a full $16,000 lower than my maximum preapproval amount. It would have been ideal for the price alone, but I also thought it was charming. There was a grant being offered in Ohio that would pay 2.5% of the loan amount for your down payment. I was approved for an FHA loan, so that would mean I would need to come up with just 1%. That would have been great, so I went ahead with making an offer on the first house.

The offer wasn't just rejected; it wasn't even countered! My agent - the woman I met at the open house in February - suggested I go above the listing offer in order to get that house. She wanted me to tell her right then if that's what I wanted to do. I told her I don't make decisions like that - at least, not wise ones. I opted to bow out and keep searching (as it turns out, the house had two other offers, and those owners, playing hardball, lost all three).

I came back home after spending most of the summer with my family in the Ashland area, and I was feeling discouraged. By then, I really wanted to buy a house, but I just hadn't found a home that really felt like mine. Back to the old internet search, I found an open house for a home in Cedarville, where I work. I walked through and really liked it. It was $20,000 more than I'd been preapproved for, but I went forward with finding out if I could increase my approval number anyway.

I found out that the grant that would have paid 2.5% of my down payment had run out of money, so I'd need to come up with the whole amount of the 3.5% required for an FHA loan. That meant I'd have to borrow from a relative - not my favorite idea. I teach a class as an adjunct at Cedarville, but I was told the pay for that job couldn't be included since I hadn't been making that for a year. This house qualified for a rural housing loan - a loan offered by the USDA available only in small communities in an attempt to bring more buyers to those areas - but I had to be within certain income-to-debt ratios for approval. The nice thing about rural housing loans is that no down payment is required. Those weren't recommendations; those were regulations that had to be followed. I was told I exceeded them, but my lender put together a packet to apply for the rural housing loan and asked me to write a letter saying I would use the $8000 tax credit to pay off my car, which would lower those I-t-D ratios. Did that, and the time of waiting to hear the USDA's decision (which usually took 4-6 weeks to hear back) began.

I wanted to write all that out so you could see and appreciate just how much God did in this situation.

1. My approval number was increased by $20,000 with my income remaining the same as it had ben.

2. Two weeks after submitting the application, I was approved for a rural housing loan, which meant I did not have to make a down payment.

3. Traditionally, you have to put 20% down or else you have to pay PMI. With a rural housing loan, no PMI is required.

4. A rural housing loan is a traditional loan (which I didn't know when my lender helped me apply for it), so I went from an FHA loan to a conventional loan, and the interest rate went from 6% to 5.5%.

5. Having to make no down payment and not being required to pay PMI, my monthly payment actually went DOWN. Had I been approved for another type of loan, I would have been made to make a down payment and still would have had a higher mortgage.

6. My home-owner's insurance was also $22 less than quoted, and I have coverage in 30 perils, not just 16. The only reason I got better coverage (as well as increased liability limits) was that the agent on the phone said she could offer it.

7. In the end, the seller's were paying my closing costs, and they paid so much above and beyond the actual cost associated with my purchase of the house that it exceeded what my closing costs were and subsequently lowered my total loan amount by $1300, which reflected a $10 decrease in my mortgage payment.

Whenever I start to feel a little worried that I'm biting off more than I can chew, that I won't be able to afford this house, or that this was a bad decision to buy a home right now at all, I walk myself through what I just wrote here. I bought a house that was $20,000 more than I was told I could afford, had to make no down payment, don't have to pay PMI, got a lower interest rate, had a letter that pretty much said "trust me, I'll pay off my car" serve as a guarantee for a federal governmental office to approve me for a rural housing loan and overlook that the income-to-debt ratios were higher than they allow, and STILL save more money each month than I would have otherwise.

If that it's God's hand at work, orchestrating this process, I don't know what is. The Lord has clearly been leading me down this path. His master craftmanship is displayed all the time, and this time, He used a major purchase to show me He was intimately involved at every step. The process wasn't easy, but it was ordained, and I can take peace in that.

Oh, and interestingly enough, the house I looked at first back in February was listed for the exact same amount that this house was listed for. Coincidence or providence? You decide. I already know what I believe.