When I decided to move to Los Angeles, CA in 2007, I made a promise to my friends and family that I would only be gone for one to two years at most. Well you can definitely say I broke that promise since I ended up living in LA for seven years!

During the early stages of Keith and I’s relationship, I had hinted towards moving back to Seattle but nothing ever came of it. Even as we got closer to getting engaged and eventually were engaged, I still couldn’t get Keith to agree to move back to Seattle with me. Keith grew up in Mississippi before moving to Colorado where he spent his high school and early college years. He had moved to LA for work in 2005 but quickly moved back to Colorado in 2006. It was in 2007, where he would move to LA once more and meet the love of his life (yep, that’s me!).

Keith had never been to Seattle before 2007. However, once he started working for Edelman on the Xbox team, he would find himself making frequent trips to Seattle for work (it probably averaged about one to two times a month). His main reason for not wanting to move to Seattle was the rainy and cold weather the majority of the year.

It wasn’t until early 2013 when Keith’s stance on Seattle changed. I still don’t know what exactly changed his mind but who cares, since it got me back to my home. We started looking for homes in Seattle about mid-March. At first, it was just emails back and forth to each other with Redfin links. We had a trip planned up to Seattle around late March / early April to meet with wedding vendors and it was during this time, we decided to meet with a real estate agent. I had reached out to my friend, Henry, to get his thoughts on the Seattle market. Henry had been a real estate agency for several years now and focused on the Seattle area. Given his track record (as seen on Facebook), I knew we could count on him. We ended up seeing a few houses while we were in town but none that were of real interest to us.

Throughout April and May, we continued to find houses on Redfin and would forward them to Henry, who would check out the houses he thought were suitable for us. There were a couple houses that Keith and I saw separately in Wallingford that we both really liked. We put offers on both houses but luck was not on our side – we were outbid by thousands of dollars! Then one day, Keith came across a quaint little home in Greenlake and sent it to Henry. That same day, Henry was able to take a tour of the house and took a YouTube video so we could get a virtual tour of it. My brother, Andy, even made it over to the house to take a look for us and said the house was by far the best one that he had seen. We loved what we saw so much that Keith made a day trip up to Seattle to see the house for himself, as well as a couple others of course. Of the three houses he saw, the Greenlake one was still the best. The location was amazing, the finishes were really well done and better yet, the price point was a couple hundred thousand dollars less than our max budget! We put an offer in the next day and it was accepted later that evening. We even got it for less than listing price – can you say meant to be?!?

We closed on this beautiful craftsman house in Greenlake on June 3rd, 2013. We’re so thankful we scored this stellar house given the hot Seattle market.