Mosaic Life

Woo, home-buying!

July 29, 2009 on 9:48 am | In Uncategorized |

So we’ve begun the early stages of the home-buying process. Not shockingly, it has included a rollercoaster of emotions even in the first week. I’ve gone through feeling incredibly anxious, to elated about finding something I love, super depressed because it seems like our budget has limited us strongly, and then incredibly hopeful. Here is an example of my thought process at a given time:

9:15 a.m.: Waiting to hear back from our realtor about two properties we emailed to him at 9 p.m. last night.

9:16 a.m. WHAT IS WRONG WITH HIM HE HAD BETTER GET ON THE BALL OR WE WILL FIND SOMEONE ELSE aw man i hope we can get a viewing soon WHY HASN’T HE GOTTEN US A VIEWING APPOINTMENT YET

I’ve had a crush on at least three places, one I could have gotten more serious about but it just seems like it may not be right. Here are some considerations.

With our budget and desired location, it seems like we’d be able to get a nicer condo than house. Pros of a condo: no yard work, you don’t have to do as much with upkeep, more likely that you’ll have amenities like a pool or workout room. Main con: holy frijoles at the HOA fees. I mean, we could be paying $275 a month just to live there. And it’s hard to convince myself that it’s worth it with places that don’t have plentiful amenities. One place seems possibly worth it, which has a pool, workout room, theatre room, club house, and it’s very new and well-kept up, but that place is at the higher part of our budget, which would leave us with less rainy day cash.

With a condo, it’s likely that we’ll only have two bedrooms, which is well and good with the way things are now. Brandon will use the second bedroom as an office, since he often works from home and he has a billion books. However, in the next five years it’s likely that we’ll want to have a kid, and I doubt the kid would be cool with sleeping in a drawer in our spacious kitchen. So there’s that.

As for houses, it looks like we would have to get a dump in order to stay in our desired location. We found a couple of houses in a quiet neighborhood that seem promising, but since they aren’t as close, it would mean a longer commute for both of us (though not unreasonable). But both houses are in our budget, have three bedrooms, and big back yards. And they’re nice for first-time homes.

I think what’s most scary about this process is that it’s our first time buying, and we don’t want to get screwed over. We’re trying to do as much research as possible, so hopefully that won’t happen (or it won’t be as severe).

Anyway, we’ll see how things go.