I haven't posted in awhile because things have been busy with changes. If anyone knows me I don't like change unless I am prepared so that has been what I have been trying to do. Prepare for the unknown. There are some changes I can't speak of yet but one is...
Brian and I are possibly thinking seriously about buying a house.
Yup....there it is.
We are definitely crunching our numbers to even see if its possible. How did this come about?
I have been living without a dresser for about 3 years now. I have some space in the closet and a lingerie dresser which does not hold much and that is about it. The floor tends to be used as a shelf.
This past Saturday...yup 4 days ago...Brian and I decided we should look at dressers for me. We went to Ashley where we got our AMAZING living room set and found a dresser for the right price and look but the wrong color. While talking our sales lady ended up telling us about where she lives. It was in an area we thought we didn't like but she definitely intrigued us. We ended up finding out, before we bought the dresser, that the color was very wrong so we decided to go out again on the hunt. Before we did that we drove to the sales lady's neighborhood.
First good sign: Natural Gas. For all those lucky Northerners...Natural Gas is very rare down here...VERY rare. Almost non existent. As we cook our dream would be to use Natural Gas as it is sooooo much better then electric. The neighborhood is in between both of our jobs while keeping us close to everything which is amazing. The neighborhood isnt fully built up yet but there are rows where you have three houses next to each other and while they are close...they are not nearly as close as most other developments. This is exciting! The houses are also not very cookie cutter, there are enough variations to make it look like a diverse neighborhood.
I decide that I want to go into the model home. I know they are going to want to pressure us into buying but I just wanted some pamphlets because this did look like the ideal place. (We have been looking for areas for awhile now). We get in and meet a nice lady who goes and walks through the whole house with us and answers all of our questions. Brian and I are on the same page with everything. 90% of what we like is coming standard, Brian and I both agree on what extra's we don't need, we both love everything about it basically. We decide to sit down and actually price it out, just to see. What we want ends up coming to 230k. More then we were thinking but not as bad as what we would have expected.
During the conversation with the Sales lady she also mentioned that there is another neighborhood in the same area that the builder owns and that we could get a next to identical house over there if we didn't like a lot or house at the current location.
After crunching our numbers we felt like the first area was out of our price range so we ask to be transferred to the other area's representative as our lady doesnt work over there. She happily transfers us after her boss okay'd her dropping the price to 223k which helps but we aren't sure if it is enough. She did give the new salesman a price write up of what we would want in his subdivision to help make things easier. The almost identical house with the options we want would be 209k.
We do have some deposit for it. I have been saving and planning for this in a while. This could happen sooner then planned but we do have a fair amount for it. We are now trying to figure out if we have enough to bring the monthly payment low enough for us to feel comfortable. If Brian and I don't have enough to cover bills, provide cushion and some money left over for saving, we feel pretty uncomfortable. We have looked at multiple mortgage calculators and as it stands right now the first house we like is only $175 more a month then the house we have yet to see (build actually, both houses would be built).
I do have emails out to their suggested mortgage company and to my credit union. We are trying to find out as much as we can without anyone running our credit. We have an idea on what the homeowners insurance might be with my auto/rental insurance company and an idea about what our PMI payments would be. We also know that if we go through their recommended mortgage company we get 2% of the base price towards closing costs which is great for us. Both, the builders and the insurance company, check out on the BBB which is awesome as well. Tonight we are going to crunch more numbers as there are some extras that we now realize we don't want so that should help as well.
On Saturday Brian and I are going back to the first property and going to see the second property and hopefully make some progress there. I will be taking pictures and will describe the differences between the two more in that post.
Right now we are waiting for one more thing to fall in place and to see what the mortgage payment would be and we might be buying a house!
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