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Our first home

We were married in 1967 and had rented for five years. During that time I gave birth to our son. And when he was four years old I said we need a home. My husband said we couldn't afford it. But I said lets look around and see what is needed to get into a home.

We lived in Oakland, California at that time and wanted to move to the country. So we started looking in Concord, California. It was a nice community with very little traffic. We stopped by several open houses but the homes were over what we knew we could not afford. We happened to stop by a real estate office one Sunday and there we met a Realtor who was new to the field. He was originally a longshoreman who was on strike and needed to do something until the strike ended. We were his first prospect as buyers.

He took us around to several homes and none of them felt right for us, so we went back to the office. We told him we didn't know if we would even qualify for a home and he said he would do some checking to see what we would need. He asked us what we were looking for in a home and we told him a nice yard for our son and maybe two or three bedrooms and in a nice area near schools.

The next weekend he called and said he had a couple of homes for us to look at. So we drove to Concord and he took us around to the homes. The first one was nice but the back yard looked like a jungle and the second one was not the cleanest one we had seen. We told him we were sorry but no on the two homes. He could understand. He said he would keep looking until he found the right home for us.

He called during the next week and said a new listing had just come in, he checked it out and thought we would like to see it. So we went after work to see the home. He took us there and when we walked in we could feel the warmth of the home and it was calling to us. It had a big kitchen and I could just picture myself cooking in it. The back yard was perfect for children. All fenced and a huge yard. It was close to schools and in a cul-de-sac. There were children living in the area that were around our sons age. The owners were very warm and told us the work they had done on their home. We said thank you for showing their home and left. We went back to the office and told the Realtor we loved the home and to see if we could qualify. We did the paper work and headed back home.

He called us a few days later and said we would qualify and only needed $2,000.00 down. We didn't have that much money saved but we told him we would

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