My focus is so in the toilet this afternoon, just sitting here is torture.
I don’t know how I’m going to make it through the next 27 days. I want to be in the house now! Not in the office! Not in our apartment–which is growing increasingly annoying by the second!
Blah. Ugh. Hurry up, April.
And I’m stuck in an office all day.
I’d like to be just about anywhere but the office. I’ve been rather productive this week, and don’t have a lot to finish up this Friday afternoon. And my mind is every where else anyway.
This week Andy and I found a house! We entered the contract, and are closing on April 19. We have a lot to figure out before then–like how much we’re going to put down, homeowner’s insurance, tax credit, appliances and junk for when we do move. La la la.
First things first–how much to put down. UGH. We’d like to do 20%, but not sure if 20% will wipe us out too much. If we don’t do 20%, we’ll do 15%. If we do 15%, we’ll have mortgage insurance for 5 years and a few months if we don’t pay any extra. Our lender has a bi-weekly payment plan that would allow us to stop paying PMI after almost 3 years, but could we really afford that many payments? BAH. I don’t know, but we have to figure it out by Monday morning so we can finish the loan.
Then there’s homeowner’s insurance, and I wish I could get a clue with online quotes first, but the sites keep asking me questions I don’t know the answers to, and it’s annoying the crap out of me. Our realtor told us her favorite agent, so I may just call him to get started on having a clue.
Then the tax credit bit is confusing, but I think I finally figured that out. We want to claim it for 2009, but our closing date is after April 15. Looks like we can file an extension though. So that should be good. Can’t they just say that somewhere on the official first time homebuyer tax credit program website? Some of us are retarded about taxes and didn’t know you could file an automatic extension!
After we close, we’ll need to get some appliances. Like a refrigerator. Washer and Dryer. Oh, and a lawn mower and yard junk. I am so clueless about taking care of a lawn, it’s ridiculous. Haven’t lived in a home since living with my parents (10 years ago), and I’ve never mowed grass before in my life. But, I’m kind of excited about having a lawn and learning to take care of it! I just don’t really know where to start. I suppose we could always hire people to do it. But…I don’t know. I’d like to learn if I can.
Worry worry worry. I’m just ready to be done with this junk and move in. I can’t wait to have a house and be out of this apartment complex. Our neighbors get on my last nerve and I’m quite ready to be done with their elephant stomping asses.
So the house? It’s has 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Nice covered patio. Our master bedroom has a door to the patio as well, which is really neat. It has a super pretty kitchen with dark cabinets, which I was incredibly picky about when we were looking for houses. Just not a fan of lighter wood colors there. Our kitchen also has a built-in desk with areas for sorting mail/bills.
Overall, I just love the style of the house. The archways, light fixtures, and things like door knobs are fantastic. I also love the tile floors and the carpet color in the bedrooms. The paint is pretty–neutrals, but a bit darker than normal.
I also love the neighborhood. We were hoping to find a home over there. It’s a new, fast growing area. Very close to Kroger–my favorite Kroger at that. Haha.
Anyway, babble babble babble. I’m excited and ready for April 19! I can’t decide if the next month is going to go excruciatingly slow, or creep up quickly with all we have to do.
So Andy and I are planning on buying a house in the next few months, hoping to take advantage of that nice $8000 tax credit. All we’ve done so far is look around at various open houses around town and browse the internet…and think about our finances.
We’re planning to meet with someone to talk about mortgages and all that fantastically scary stuff soon. I’m so utterly clueless. And of course, we want to put as much money down on a house as possible, but to me this is the frightening part. We can’t deplete our disposable savings because we’ll still need a lot for other expenses–washer/dryer, possibly fridge if we buy a new house, and god knows what else (like I said, clueless).
I have excellent credit, and Andy at least has very good credit, though he hasn’t checked his score in a while. Combine that with our incomes and we could afford more than we need as far as monthly payments go—the limiting factor in the whole thing being the down payment. We have a decent amount we could put down, but I don’t know if we could come up with 20% of the house cost. Parents may be able to help and maybe there’s other options available I don’t know about, but the whole thing makes me antsy and I want to just get it figured out already.
I’m also ready to look at more than just open houses–i.e., I’m ready for a realtor to show us some stuff. Since we’ve only been browsing around by ourselves, we’ve only looked at new homes. Which is entirely too much fun. I like new stuff. I have a feeling it might be hard to convince Andy or I to get a used home at this point. Then again, we’re pretty clueless right now still.
I’ve spent entirely too much time browsing listings online, and I seriously question the decorative choices of the people who live around me. Fuchsia paint? Insane wall paper? Taking pictures of your amazingly ugly furniture instead of the house…UGH. I even saw one house where the pictures showed trash and empty hangers all over the place. Too distracting for looking at pictures. So to even consider these houses, I’d need to see them in person.
Also, the idea of painting and dealing with wallpaper (unacceptable that I would live with any wallpaper!) does not thrill me. But then again as my dad pointed out, you can often get a better price on the home by willing to look past other people’s hideous choices and paint yourself.
If we do end up going with a new home, we could have it built. Maybe. I’m not sure how the timing would work out with that and the tax credit. I think Andy is more for this than I am at this point. But we’ll see.
I will say this about the experience so far: I am the more practical/cautious one of our relationship. 
