We Found A House in Germany!

I know I can hardly believe it myself, I’m sure you had to re-read the title twice to make sure you read it right 😉 Yes, we have officially found a house in Germany! After 10.5 weeks of living in Germany and 13 weeks of being ‘homeless’ there is finally an end in sight! It’ll still be a few weeks before we get to move in because we have to give 2 week notice at the Wiedenhof but at least we know we are moving soon and I don’t have to stalk bookoo daily anymore, whew!

Remember my list I posted with what I wanted in a house here? Well by the time we’d hit the 8 week mark I was starting to think maybe I was asking too much…let’s revisit the list:

My wish list isn’t super unrealistic, at least not to me. All I want is:
At least 5 bedrooms OR 4 bedrooms and an office or bonus room
At least 2 bathrooms with 2 showers (more on this later)
Kitchen on the first floor
Laundry not down on the 4th floor
A garage, no off street parking, and we need the extra storage.
And in between Bitburg & Spangdahlem as we’ll be driving to both bases often

Guess what the house that we got not only meets these ‘basic’ requirements but also has so much more! I’m so glad we didn’t give in and settle, because we almost did a few times! Sure there are some ‘quirks’ to the house, as with any German house we’ve found, but we think that the ‘perks’ of it far outweigh the ‘quirks!’ More about the house in the upcoming post after we move in.

So do you wanna know how we found the house? I’m sure you do because y’all know it’s been QUITE the process for us if you’ve been following along. We ended up looking at 21 houses during out house hunting process. We easily could’ve looked at more but I quickly learned if it didn’t offer the basics of what I wanted it wasn’t worth it to go waste our time and look. We found it’s pretty crazy to waste time going to look at a house that doesn’t have one of the basic requirements like a garage, or 2 bathrooms, because those just aren’t going to work for us and we don’t have tons of free time to spend running around like knuckleheads looking at houses that we know won’t work 😉

Back in November I had seen a house listed on Facebook that I thought might work for us and we had to decide on another house by that evening, as I’d already asked for an extra day. The house we were deciding on ‘could’ have worked for us but something about it just wasn’t settling right with me. One of the big pitfalls was that it was literally right off a busy highway here and I didn’t want to worry about Bea playing outside. So I sent a message to the lady who posted the house on Facebook and she agreed to let me come see the house. I prayed on the way over there that God would show me a sign if this was supposed to be the house, that he would show me butterflies. Yes, in the middle of winter, I know I was asking for a lot. So I went to the house and during the tour it was looking like it could work for us. Then we got to one of the bedrooms and she opened the door and the wall is covered in butterflies, so immediately I knew we had to say ‘No’ to the other house.

This was great I thought I’d found the perfect house and called Mr. B to tell him so and sent the word out to my friends who’d been praying for us during this journey. But as we have come to find out Germany has been a challenging PCS and it didn’t stop when I ‘found’ the house. The family that was going to be moving out was supposed to be leaving for medical reasons, by the end of Dec. or 1st of Jan. That was no biggie as it was only 4 more weeks. Well during that time and right around Christmas we found out that they would not be leaving for medical reasons. This was not only a blow to us but to the sweet family who was expecting to leave. So right after the New Year we turned our house hunting search back on into full gear.

A few weeks later we found a house that Mr. B liked but that I thought was way to small for us, at this point I was considering it because I was really wanting to get settled and start enjoying life here in Germany. We told the landlord that we liked it but needed to know where the bus stop was, she agreed to let us check with the base on Monday (this was a Saturday). The next day she sent me a message and said someone else showed up and took the house. That was when we learned that the landlords here are all about themselves and money, not worrying about their word to American families. Mr. B was upset, I was upset that the lady was a liar but not upset over losing that house because with all our stuff it would’ve been a tight fit.

A few days later I got a message from the lady in the house I really liked saying that they were again going to be leaving but not until April. I got the message the 2nd week of January. When I told Mr. B as he drove home that night he got upset with me, because he did not want to wait until April. Truthfully I did not want to wait either but really liked the house. I after talking about it with Mr. B that night I knew that I wanted to go talk with a Chaplain to get some clarity from an outside perspective so I called an got an appt.

Later that week I met with the Chaplain (who is awesome) and a few days later I decided that I would take Mr. B out to see the house that I really liked, he still had not seen it. The Chaplain had told me that he would ask around in his village so see if there was anything coming available. I was hoping that by taking Mr. B out to the house I liked that he would be able to point out flaws that I had overlooked and help me see why it was’t the best fit for our family. Instead he really liked the house! After seeing it he agreed that we should wait until April. We agreed that we would continue to look but if we couldn’t find anything that came close to it, and so far we hadn’t, we would just move in April, another 70 some days away. At this point I think the kids were thinking that we had lost our minds, LOL!

About a week after meeting with the Chaplain he called to tell me about a house, when he told me where it was I knew the house because we’d already seen it but it had been too expensive. I thanked him for the info and trying to help us out. The next day he called me back and told me the landlord had called him and wanted to know who he told about the house. When he told her about us she remembered us and asked him if we had a dog, which he confirmed. She told him to tell us that she would lower the rent to our housing cap, he then called us back with the news. We sat on the info for a few days because Mr. B was so busy with work and there were a few concerns we had, but I prayed about it and a few days later I sent Mr. B a text message and told him to make an appt for us to see the house again. It was about this time I was starting to feel like the house we originally wanted and was waiting on wasn’t going to work. Due to the military and how it works the dates kept getting pushed back and I has a feeling the family wasn’t going to be out as early as they wanted. I was struggling with waiting since Boo will be leaving for college this summer and I would like to be in a house for more than 2 months before he goes! I also felt like we ‘needed’ to go look at the house again because the Chaplain had reached out to the landlord and she lowered the rent, and I believe that things happen for a reason. I was praying for a house, I felt I needed to go see the Chaplain, and then he called about a house…see I just had to go back and consider it.

We went back and re-looked at the house and the concerns that we had were addressed so we signed a promissory note on the spot! It had a few things that needed to be done to get approved for the housing inspection so we had to wait for those to get completed before we could get a contract date. Now we are anxiously waiting until end of the month so we can move in! In the meantime we’ve found some great people along the way who are helping us to get things lined up before we move in like the Internet and who have connections in the village. I’m also excited because we’ve found that several great families live in the village as well. I really feel like it has all worked out as it should even though we had to wait 3 months here in Germany before moving into a house. We’ve learned that you CAN live out of suitcase for 3+ months, that you can survive with out tons of ‘stuff’ spread all over, that flexibility is a mindset, that kids our kids are amazing and and cope with chaos like troopers, that our dog adapts to the life of a nomad, and that in the midst of trials we grow closer and chose to find the positive in the situation.

I will post pics (of the inside) when we move in 🙂 Trying to decide if I’ll do a video but that’s way outside my comfort zone 😉 So as you can see we are proof that you will not live at the Wiedenhof forever and that patience and prayers pay off!