A little life update for you, TJ moved in to our future home last weekend! If you didn't see my Instagram yesterday...surprise, it's in Georgia!

If you know either of us in real life, you know this has been a long time in the making. TJ has worked for the same company since he graduated from college, based in an Atlanta suburb. He started his career there, and was able to come home to Charlotte after being there for a year and a half. Now they have called him back to the area to work out of that office again. However, the pandemic actually got us more time in Charlotte than we were originally expecting. His office was supposed to re-open in September, then October, and then January. Now it is set for March. However, his house in Charlotte was sold in August, when the office was supposed to be re-opening in October.

We started taking some house hunting trips in September, which turned into a few more trips in October. We actually spent almost every weekend there, the 2020 housing market is no joke. The inventory is low, the prices are high, and the competition is tough. We had probably toured close to 40 houses spanning across several suburban cities. One house we loved went under contract within an hour of seeing it, another went for $20k over asking price. We lost one offer on a due diligence period, and two others were beat out with all cash offers. We even put several of the offers in over FaceTime because we knew they would go under contract within 24 hours. Not to mention the hours spent on the Redfin/Zillow/Realtor apps each day, as we looked at just about every house that came up in the price range. The last FaceTime tour was the one. It ended up being about 10 minutes further out from the main area we had been searching. We went to see the house for the first time on Halloween, and we loved it! This Instagram post saying we were going as "House Hunters" for Halloween was actually taken in the driveway. The inspections were done throughout the following week, TJ closed late last week, and he moved in last weekend! His company has some great relocation perks, including hiring services that unpacked most of his stuff on Saturday. So it is fairly quickly starting to look like a home, we even put up some Christmas decorations!

I won't be joining him in the house until after the wedding, but I am making my way down there before then. Although at the moment, I'm not quite sure exactly when that will be as it will be dependent on finding a job. As you likely know, I've always lived in NC, and TJ is a Charlotte native. So it is tough to leave, but we will ideally be back in NC at some point. But I can't wait to get started on decorating with all of our finds from antique stores and estate sales. Side note: I now have an Instagram story highlight of the stores we have been to in the Carolinas, and a few in Georgia. We have a few projects in mind, but won't be doing anything major to the house. The kitchen and master bathroom have been recently renovated, and we love how they were done. TJ is also very excited that is has a basement and a great deck space outside. I will be posting all about it as we go along, and I'm so excited to share!

Thanks for reading!