For anyone that is interested, here is our home buying journey.

A little background into how we got into the mess we are in. My husband used to be the executive director for a non-profit that he dearly loved and was very passionate about. As small non-profits tend to go, they were barely scraping by. In 2007 he decided that he could no longer pull a salary and the business continue to run. So he stopped getting paid. I was working so we were able to feed ourselves at least. He thought this would be temporary. It was not. He continued working for free for three years. Hence, the horrible credit, collections, and awful payment history. I have managed in the last two years to pay off every debt we owed and rebuild my credit to the point we are now. We moved in with my parents, all of us. Me and my husband, our daughter, two dogs and a cat. It has been an awful two years.

Now my credit has recovered enough that we can hopefully purchase our dream home. I talked to the lender today, he will be pulling credit in the morning and will let me know. I am so nervous. Hopefully we will be well on our way to pre-approval tomorrow.

We have pretty much decided on the house we want. We fell in love with a house that was new construction but already completed. Someone bought it two weeks ago. We are going to talk to that builder about building the same home on one of the lots that is still available in that neighborhood. This house is 1,890 square feet, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Oh, and it is perfect. It has everything on both of our wish lists. The only problem is the home that just sold went for $255k and we wanted our max to be $245k I am hoping that building our own might come out a little cheaper. But I would definitely still buy it at $255k.

Wish us luck! Hoping to have some good news tomorrow. I don't think we will have any problem with pre-approval as long as the credit scores are there. DTI and income are all good.