Kirk Caraway/Nevada Appeal Anthony and Michelle Charles watch sons Jacob, center, and Eli play in the backyard of their new Dayton home.
The first day that Anthony and Michelle Charles moved into their new Dayton home, the drain hose for the washing machine became disconnected and flooded their floor. It was an early but welcome lesson in the responsibilities of homeownership.
"I just had to laugh, because we had no landlord to call, it was our problem," Michelle said. "We had to deal with it on our own, and when it was over we didn't have to worry about anything."
And for their sons Jacob, 4, and Eli, 2, it meant getting their boogie board out of the garage and trying to skim across the wet floor.
The Charles family had moved five times in the last five years. Anthony served in the U.S. Navy as a mechanic on F-18 aircraft, and later transferred to the U.S. Army where we worked on Chinook helicopters. After he landed a job as a deputy with the Washoe County Sheriff's Office last year, they started looking to buy a home.
"We looked everywhere, Reno, Carson, Dayton, everywhere," Michelle said.
After being pre-approved for a loan to know how much they could afford, and looking at homes on their own for a few months, they approached Realtor Jody Foley with a detailed description of the kind of home they were looking for.
"We came up with a list of everything we wanted, and she showed us this house the first day," Michelle said.
But the home, in the River Park area of Dayton, would not become theirs until after a six-month slog through the short-sale process, where the bank and the owner try to make a deal to sell the home for less than the outstanding loan.
"Someone came in before us, when the house was listed at $205,000, and they offered $200,000 cash, and the bank said no," Michelle said. "So they walked away from it. We came in and offered $208,000, and asked that they pay the closing costs. They took about two months for that, and finally said no."
But during this time the home market in the area had dropped considerably. The Charleses put in another offer for the same home, this time at $195,000. It took only two days for the bank to accept it.
But it took nearly four months for the deal to close.
The home had been unoccupied during this time, but was in excellent shape. The only casualty of the drawn-out process was the dead grass in the yard, which is now starting to come back to life.
"It's definitely not as easy as it looks on HGTV. That's not how it is. It's a process," Michelle said.
The home the Charleses bought was built in 2006, and originally sold for $329,217.
"It's terrible the way the economy is hurting people, but it worked out for us," Michelle said. "This was the perfect opportunity because we would not have been able to afford so much house."
Anthony said those looking to buy a home now should try to shop around for the best deal.
"Don't jump into the first thing you see," Anthony said. "There was this house, and there were three others of the same model. But this one had the full landscaping and yard, and the other didn't have the tile floor."
Even after they found the house they wanted, Anthony said they kept on looking, just to make sure.
They said it also helped to get pre-approved for financing, and to have a clear list of what you want in a home. With the amount of inventory available, chances are there is a match for what you want.
And when it came to making an offer, their Realtor knew a trick that helped them lock in their dream home.
"In our offer, we put a condition that the sellers could not turn in any other offers to the bank until ours fell through," Michelle said. "My sister didn't do that, and somebody came in when they were about two weeks away from closing, and they had to do a bidding war to get the house. We knew that it could take a long time to go through the process, but by doing this the house was kind of locked up so no one else could come in and take it."
Now their boys can enjoy the big backyard they share with a chocolate Lab, and have a big room to play with their new kitten. After two months, the family is settled in and basking in the joys of owning their own home.
"It's more fun being able to work in your own yard and knowing it's going to your own equity and not somebody else's," Michelle said. "We know we are going to be here, we know what school our kids are going to be in, and we've been able to plant a garden."