We love Flagstaff, but it's an expensive place to live. We spent all of our big savings from the move from Minnesota to Colorado, then Colorado to Arizona so we have not had a big enough savings to put together a down payment on a house. We've been renting our current home for about two years and the owner was letting us know that he'd like to sell it in the next year or so. He agreed to work with us to buy his home, but he still owed over $100,000 on it so he wasn't able to carry the financing if we were to buy it. With the market the way it is, it's hard to get anything without a down payment, but we checked anyways.
It turns out that there's a government grant available in Arizona to assist folks with the down payment for buying a home. We qualified for the grant and the financing we needed to buy the home. Our home appraised for $250,000 and we offered the seller $230,000 since he wouldn't have to pay realtor fees or go through the hassle of showing and selling a house from out of town. I also asked that we split closing costs, but roll our half into the loan. He accepted our offer, and even paid for a couple big repairs that the inspector found. It's pretty crazy to us how God provided this opportunity for us to start building some equity again! It seems like the market is going up again around here too, which is great so maybe we can ditch the PMI sometime next year. We'll see... For now, we're just happy to not have to move again any time soon!
