Newlyweds find first home in Butler

Jessica and Derek Zimmerman had a honeymoon that was more magical than most. Not only did the North Jersey natives celebrate their marriage in Mexico, but they learned while they were vacationing that their bid on a house was accepted.

“One week before the wedding, we put an offer in,” Jessica said of the Cape Cod-style home in Butler they bought for $355,000. “We found out they accepted our offer when we were on our honeymoon.”

“Thank God for Wi-Fi connections,” Derek said, because each day of their October honeymoon they could check with their sales agent, Elisa Kolenut of Coldwell Banker Realtors’ Kinnelon-Butler office, to see if their offer had beeen accepted. They could not text from their honeymoon location, and only had Wi-Fi to stay in touch, he said.

Their honeymoon in Riviera Maya coincided with negotiations to win a reduction of $10,000 off the $365,000 list price for the Cleary Avenue house.

Fortunately, good news from their sales agent came two days into their honeymoon and the couple felt freer to travel about — and away from their Internet connection.

“It was after the beach before dinner” that they learned of their victory, said 38-year-old Derek, a Hawthorne native who works at home in payroll. “It was nice knowing we had this waiting for us when we got home.”

“I felt like a lot happened at once – getting married and buying a home,” said Jessica, who at 28 is a mobile marketer for The New York Times.

Kolenut said the couple waited until they got back to sign the documents, though with digital signatures, they could have done that while they were south of the border.

If the offer had fallen through, the couple still had Jessica’s mom’s house in Pequannock to fall back on. They had been staying together at the two-family home to save for a down payment since they got engaged in 2012.

If they had it to do all over again, the couple said, they might not have waited until June-July to get serious about their house hunt. “I didn’t realize how long the process would take,” Jessica said.

Before that, Derek said, “we had been passively looking for a while, but as it got closer to the wedding, we started actively looking. Not just going online and saying that looks pretty.”

Jessica explained that their plans had been to buy in her native Pequannock or its neighbor, Lincoln Park, but the market surprised them, especially when it came to price.

“I just wanted to stay in town by my mom, but the market is so overpriced there, it just wasn’t possible,” she said.

Kolenut said the couple’s flexible attitude about where to live helped get them in the door. “You have to have an open mind to different areas,” she said.

Being willing to locate in Butler, she said, put the couple near New York City transportation for Jessica’s job, while giving them more for their money.

Their home is about six miles from Jessica’s mother’s house.

What the Zimmermans couldn’t be flexible about was a fenced-in yard for two dogs they have rescued.

“Everywhere we went the first thing we did was look at the back yard,” Derek said, adding that it was a “breaking point” for some properties they saw. “A dog is only a pet for people who don’t have them. When you’re a dog person, they’re family, not pets.”

Jessica agreed, noting how Ollie wore a tux at their wedding, while Eddie is a newer arrival.

Other highlights of their three-bedroom, two-bath home they closed on in December were the gourmet kitchen for Derek, who loves to cook, and the mountain views from their dining-room window and kitchen island.

The built-in pool, though not on the priority list, was a great bonus and is already getting use, they said.