We got the call Thursday morning that Matt’s parents had decided to gift us a portion of Matt’s inheritance so we could purchase the house. This was it! We could finally get the ball rolling on sorting the remainder of our finances. That same day, the seller messaged me with the name of her mortgage broker. I immediately reached out and got established as a client. Within half an hour, the mortgage broker sent me a list of everything she needed from us to proceed and by the evening, I had already submitted what was requested. It couldn’t have been timed better – I had that free time because we were on holiday. Had we been working, this process would have taken much longer. Time was on our side! Side note: when we became interested in the house, the sellers let us know that others suddenly were becoming interested as well. They had people messaging and calling them about it and they had to ward them off once they knew we were serious buyers. Crazy! Anyway, we didn’t have to do anything else house-related on our Auckland holiday, so we just enjoyed what was left of it and headed home. We knew we had a lot of work ahead of us once we got back.
On the week we got home, Matt and I met with our mortgage broker and applied for the mortgage pre-approval (we only needed to apply for the portion not covered by the inheritance). The mortgage broker was happy with our finances and expected our pre-approval to come through by the following week. She was super helpful and recommended a lawyer to us, so I called him ASAP and got established as a client. After getting established, our lawyer instructed us to call him once we negotiated with the sellers and give him the details so he could write up the contract. Early in the week, we met with John (from the board) at the house so he could have a look and help us find a price point to negotiate with the sellers. On Thursday, Matt’s building inspector friend went to the house and inspected it, free of charge. His findings were good – he told us everything in the house looks pristine and all the timber used to build the house is high quality. His only concern was if Palmerston North has a large quake, the chimney will collapse, but that’s what insurance is for.
That Saturday, we had the sellers over for the negotiation. We prepared tea and went back and forth at our kitchen table. Although the price was firm, we were able to negotiate chattels to stay with the house when they moved. We got to keep things like the six-seater solid wood dining table, a new ceiling fan still in the box, vintage phone table, TV cabinet, some garden tools, and my favourite – 17 teapots! I used to own decorative tea sets back in the States but when we moved, I couldn’t take them with me. So when the sellers offered for the teapots to stay, I was ecstatic. I felt like I was getting my life back, piece by piece. Everything that we had left, we were getting back but even better. (Mark 10:29-31)
After the negotiations were over, I contacted our lawyer to give him all the details for the contract. He drafted the contract and within the week, everyone had signed. We had to meet a finance condition before we could go unconditional, but within a few days of the negotiation, we met that condition when our mortgage preapproval came through. The buyers also had to meet a finance condition, and they were able to meet it quickly as well. Within the same week of getting the preapproval, Matt’s parents wired the money for the settlement. We thought it would take days to arrive, but it came within 24 hours of being sent. When we initially calculated the exchange rate, the calculations showed that the money would cover the remainder of the purchase price of the house and some lawyer fees. When it came through, however, the exchange rate changed to be more in our favour and we ended up having enough to cover the remainder of the purchase price of the house, lawyer fees, and a list of expenses we had incurred that we didn’t have the money to cover. But that’s not all – it covered a list of things we WANTED for the house! Actually – we got to purchase almost everything on our wants list that otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to afford at that point. Around that same time, we listed a lot of items for sale on Facebook Marketplace that we no longer needed. We were able to sell everything within the span of one day, which again was all God! I’ve never sold anything so fast on Facebook Marketplace before. This allowed us to raise even more money to be able to make house purchases once we moved in.
Click for Part 5:
The Cullums Immigrate 
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