My husband and I have neither of us ever had especially fabulous credit. Back at the beginning of our relationship we were fleetingly pre-approved for a mortgage, but ultimately everything fell through and we ended up not being able to purchase a home of our own, after all. Given the state of the market at the time, it’s likely best that we didn’t, although naturally it didn’t feel like much of a good thing at the time. At any rate, we’ve been renting for as long as we’ve been living together.

NOT a house we're buying; just an image of one I loved

Through a series of circumstances, some of them happy and some of them not, we were finally able to go through our credit reports this year and make everything good that needed goodness. And after a very long haul, some seriously unhappy times, and all that jazz — Today, we’ve finally received an honest-to-goodness pre-approval letter for a mortgage.

Another house I'm not buying; it's just COOL. Also, image from Flickr, not mine. If anyone objects I'll gladly remove it.

This is a dream come true for us — to be in a position where we can purchase a home that is really, truly ours instead of paying somebody else’s equity, etc. I don’t know how many folks reading this may be able to relate to this, but the credit rating system in this country can make one feel like a second, third, and tenth-class citizen for mistakes made more than a decade ago, so to have managed to claw our way to a Magic Number that would get us the equally magic pre-approval letter feels like the Biggest Deal Since Having A Baby.

The Owens House from the movie Practical Magic

I have no idea where we’ll ultimately end up; we’re hoping to stay here in Alexandria, VA, but we’ve looked as far as Fredericksburg, VA and Baltimore, MD, so the options are many and varied. But it’s a gigantic relief to have gotten such great news after such a long, difficult slog!