The start of it all! (Mike's version)

It actually began in September or October of 2008 when I got into contact with Demetrius Johnson. Tessa had given me his number since she knew I was wanting to start looking at houses in East Nashville over 1000 square feet and under $70,000. I had had problems with previous realtors because they kept bumping me up to higher price ranges or showing me houses that would be better to demolish.
Demetrius had just recently earned his Real Estate license and I knew that he would be hard working and diligent in the journey that I had made up in my crazy brain. We looked at around ten to twelve houses when we found a house on Brunswick. It looked decent from the outside. It was in a really quiet and safe neighborhood in East Nashville, which can be hard to come by. I made a rookie mistake, because I am a home buying rookie, and didn't look around the house like I should have. We put an offer on the house, and long story short we didn't get it because of foundation issues and not being able to secure a loan without a 20% down payment.
So Demetrius and I started looking at houses again, now knowing the rules of securing a loan for the purchase of a home in my monetary requirements. We looked at another ten homes and came across a few of them with grand potential but without the 20% down payment the dream died quickly. Demetrius had shown me a property early on on Marshall St. He personally knew the previous owner and so had Tessa. But after trying and failing to secure a construction loan for a different house that would have been probably more energy consuming than I should have been getting into.
Demetrius a few days later pointed out that the asking price for the house on Marshall St. had dropped over $10,000. We went and looked at the house again. There was nothing wrong with the house to stop the loan process. Step number one checked off the list. We had Tessa come with another time and look at the house. She liked it. Step number two checked off the list. The rest of the steps took much longer to complete the transaction but finally, a month after the original closing date, we closed on the house.
On December 29, I had two momentous occasions happen. I closed on my first house. The second was asking Tessa in the living room of the house to marry me.