BIGGEST ANNOUNCEMENT FOR OUR FAM IN 2020 – Our new Hawaii Family Home.

We’ve been waiting for this moment for YEARS, we’ve been patiently awaiting the right moment & eagerly searching. IT’S OFFICIAL! We are officially owners of our brand new home in HAWAII!! Better yet, just 1-minute drive from the beach, down the road from the house I grew up in, close by to my parents and STILL on the North Shore of Oahu!

WE DID IT, YOU GUYS! I cannot tell you how long we’ve been waiting for this moment to finally move in. I’m gonna keep it real with you guys on this blog post, I don’t want to make it all sparkles & glitter. This journey has had it’s ups and downs and so I’m just going to share the only way I know how and keep it real with ya! First & foremost me and my husband truly wan to thank EVERYONE involved in this process. From my parents to his parents, our families, friends helping us, our realtor, every person that has babysat our children while working, everyone who helped us move and not to mention our team including our realtor & loan officer to make this alllll so REAL!

Back in 2016, my husband Brandon & I got married and immediately moved in with my parents in their second house. A small + perfect 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom place upstairs. Soon after we had our daughter Mahina and it was PERFECT for our family. Being that we were staying with my parents they were doing us a HUGE favor by letting us stay. We both wanted to make sure we didn’t take that for granted and since day 1 told ourselves we would save money and eventually put away a savings to our future dream home as a family. If any of you know Hawaii it is RIDICULOUSLY hard to get a home here, and the prices are even more insane, wowza!! Since about start 2017 my husband & I continued to save, put away money and continually focus on the end goal we had in mind. We eventually had my son in 2019 and that’s when we started to seriously consider looking for a place of our own as we were quickly running out of space for our GROWING FAMILY.

In 2019, my business took off. I went full-time since ditching college behind me and devoting all my time & effort into my business I saw big leaps in what I was able to accomplish. Keep in mind during this year 9 months out of the year I was PREGNANT with my Makoa. So even though I was carrying a baby and stopped working only 2 weeks before giving birth, we got the job done. My goal was to help put even MORE money into our savings as my husband was. Between juggling 2 kids, a business, my husband in school and his job as well life was BUSY! Very busy! We made it happen regardless and so very grateful we’ve endured + pushed through the hard work to see success in the long run.

The start of the process, when we started looking for a home we had absolutely NO CLUE what we were getting into. If I’m being completely honest we still didn’t when buying a home, hence why we had an AMAZING realtor. I met Sean Hungerford our realtor when taking photos of him & his wife and eventually reached out to him when we started looking for a home in 2019. We looked at a few houses and the market was verrrry HIGH then and wouldn’t give us much for our money. While still keeping an eye out we continued to save and push our savings even more so they knew how serious we were into getting a home.

Coronavirus hit in end of March and is still continuing today as of the end of July. The market for housing plummeted drastically. Houses were getting sold for “cheaper” as cheaper as Hawaii gets mind you. And also interest rates to buy your home was low, which a low-interest rate means less interest + less money on your mortgage = A GOOD DEAL. Although, my business was slowing down or close to none at the time we had a pretty good savings on a house and with it dropping we thought if we don’t get a house now we might not get one until 2021 after my husband graduates this Winter and we are able to get on our feet again after such a slow few months. We continued to look for a house that we LOVED and put a bid in for another house nearby and after going back & forth we didn’t get it. However, that set us up to be in the perfect position in just a few weeks.

A few weeks later our realtor sent us a house just down the road, a GREAT price, fully furnished + appliances, came with everything in the home already and was on the market. He texted me and said, “this just came up on the market, if you want to see it let me know it’ll probably go in a few days”. We IMMEDIATELY jumped on it, within 24 hours we were viewing the house getting a tour and the very NEXT DAY we put in an offer and we were in ESCROW! Which means that once you’re in escrow no one can look at the house only can make back-up offers if ours were to fall through. Anyways, we did all the paperwork, finances, put a deposit down on the house and more. We were supposed to close within 45 days when the complete rollercoaster ride happened…

A 45-day loan turned into 71 days, 2 extenstions, pleading for more time from the sellers and switching loan officers + company at the very LAST DAY that we were SUPPOSED to close. We had told a lot of people we were getting a house and many knew about it and the unthinkable happened. Our loan officer couldn’t actually get the loan for us and it fell thru and were strung along for a while. We were supposed to sign that day and felt confident sharing the news as it was signing day and just days away from moving in. Little did we know, we had to ask for a 21-day extension, find a new loan officer, close a new loan with a different company and put more money down. It has been ROUGH. I haven’t shared a lot but during this process especially towards the end, I felt a lot of stress, anxious, overwhelmed. Mind you we had EVERYTHING packed, we were living out of boxes in our house and we had a whole month left to go with everything packed away. And if we didn’t get it, we would have to unpack everything and I just imagined being so defeated at the time and kicked down just when I thought it was a dream, it was way less than that.

Our original loan officer dropped the ball at the very last day in the final hour, while she told us we couldn’t get the loan + house I was also emailing our NEW loan officer in hopes of a true MIRACLE to happen. So much was on the line this time around and out of nowhere, a true miracle happened. We worked with our new loan officer for 21 days, got approved for the loan, signed the house documents a DAY before our last closing date aka “the cutoff” and got the keys to our very OWN house for our family!!!!!! Phew, that was A LOT! Miracles don’t come easy and I told you it wasn’t all glitter + sparkles. We have been through it ALL and our realtor even said, he’s never witnessed something like this and our’s was the first to have such a hard case + at the last day switch everything and STILL somehow pull it off.

Something my mom said during this heartache process really stood out to me. She said, “You know even if you don’t get the house, at least you know you both did EVERYTHING in your power to TRY.” She also ended with, “Some people aren’t even willing to try because they’re scared to fall on their face, you’ve just gotten up after falling and kept on GOING…”

WOW. If that doesn’t summarize my life, our marriage, the process of us a getting a home and more I don’t know what does. Time and time again me and my husband haven’t had the easiest route or given things along the way. EVERYTHING we’ve had to earn, to try, to fail and get up again, to keep pushing the limits and see what we’re capable of. A miracle happened and we got the house and after a long journey we are SO GRATEFUL for everything it has taught us.

In conclusion, we just want to sincerely thank every single person involved. Whether it’s a like on my Instagram page, a nice comment or DM, a kind reply, the help we get from friends + family, our babysitters, my team of workers who help run my business day in and day out, and even YOU just taking time to read my blog post, EVERYONE! We just want to sincerely thank YOU. We appreciate you and your time, your kind words, your support, your love and MORE. We have sooo many people to thank our list is endless but just know we are forever grateful and we didn’t do this on our own. So many people had a hand in it that you wouldn’t even realize. THANK YOU & WE ARE GRATEFUL TO ANNOUNCE WE ARE OFFICIALLY HOMEOWNERS IN HAWAII & MOVED IN! WOOP WOOP!!