Over the weekend, Ryan and I decided that now is the time to buy a house. The reasons for this decision are these:
1. The $8,000 tax credit will be over in 3 months. Ryan just got a raise, but he probably won't have a salaried position until after that time period. Hence, now is a good time to move on this.
2. We'll go for something quite modest right now... something in which the mortgage payments are less than our current rent. (How cool is it that we can buy a house for essentially less than we're spending on rent? Pretty dang, I think.) This means that when Ryan does get a salary, the extra money can go into savings, or vacations, or house/land improvements that will increase the value of our home when we decide to sell in a few years. This instead of waiting until he does have a salary and we spend as much money as we can on the mortgage payment and have a very nice house but little in the way of anything extra.
3. I'm going a little bit stir crazy in this tiny little apartment without a yard.
So, we're searching. So far, our criteria are these:
1. Small house; lots of dirt. We need to get outside. All three of us do. Cara looks amazed every time we leave the house... because she gets outside at all maybe twice a week. I used to spend 30 hourse of every week outside, and now I get outside maybe -maybe- twice as much as Cara... which is to say that I go get the mail while she's inside taking a nap. Anyway, we want at least 1/4 of a acre, but the more the better to my way of thinking. I grew up on 600+ acres, for goodness' sake!
2. Three bedrooms, two baths. Cara needs her own room, and there's a good possibility that we'll be having at least one more child while we're in this house. Again, the more the better, but we're getting good at making do.
3. Storage space. Be it in a garage or a shed out back, we need someplace to store our extra stuff. We plan on having a lawn, which means a lawnmower. Ryan has a weight set; I want to get a stationary bike. We both love tools, and I have a bunch of tack that we need to put somewhere.
Those are the bare necesities. Of course we'd like other things. A big kitchen. A master bathroom. A dining area that is separate from the kitchen. A living room and a family room. A laundry room. A pantry. More bedrooms. A two-car garage. A tack room. An indoor arena. Well, those last two are more for "someday", but while I'm dreaming...
We're looking for a place that will be no more than a 30 minute drive from Orem. Of course, Orem is where Ryan works now. That location may be changing relatively soon. The company is doing well, and they're looking to expand to a bigger facility. When that happens, they will probably be moving north, close to Lindon. Probably. Nothing is set in stone, of course. Still, it's something to keep in mind.
Anyway, we're seriously considering getting a manufactured home and a piece of land. We found 23.6 acres for $20,000 in Elberta, but the drive was a little too far. If we find just the right house already built, then fantastic. But I'm okay with a little hard work and making sure we have just what we want. Plus, if we have to do all the landscaping ourselves, it will have many many benefits. Exercise. A chance to learn about gardening. We'll all get outside more. All sorts of possibilities.
Then again, having a sprinkler system already put in is nice too...
I'm excited! It's like a game, trying to find a place that will be the best thing for our whole family for the next several years. I'm having fun trying to get it all figured out.
Wish us luck!
3 comments:
Good luck! House hunting is exciting, fun, tiring, and frustrating all at the same time. Glad you can take advantage of the tax credit--we bought our house 4 months too soon to get it. :( How exciting that you get to start on this adventure! We'll keep our fingers crossed you can find what you want quickly and for a fabulous price!
Two things:
1) the tax credit is actually a loan that comes off future tax returns. Just so you know.
2) We decided we would look at at least fifty houses before we picked one to buy, so we would know when we'd found just the right house. Week after week we drove around. We probably looked at a hundred from the outside, ten to twenty with our realtor, and found four worth making an offer on.
House #1 outbid. Thank goodness; it needed a lot of work.
House #2
Prices continued to drop and we found another one I loved but I was worried about the tree in the backyard. Anyway, she couldn't come down at all on price, so we didn't get it.
House #3 was owned by a bank, and didn't pass inspection because it needed a new roof. They wouldn't go lower or give a roof allowance, so we got our earnest money back. (I have to admit to smirking as I watched it listed week after week until the price dropped by $30,000 and they offered a roof allowance at last!) By then,we had found house #4.
House 4 had been on the market for less than 24 hours when we walked into it. It needed complete repainting indoors but it was a great layout and I fell in love with the family room, which is surrounded by bookshelves on three walls, from about waist high. It was the biggest we'd seen in our price range, and it was in good shape. Complete sprinkler systems installed front and back, two car detached garage, fully landscaped, even roses in front. How could I resist? This was not a house to settle on, it was the house that felt right, the house I could look at and say, "that's my home!" So we made an offer, and it was accepted, and here we are now! I still love my home, and the inside still mainly needs repainting, but that's okay.
It was definitely worth the wait and the trouble, so hang in there and be patient and pray and the Lord will send you to the right house.
wv: avedlepi--How the lepers say "unclean" in yiddish. Just kidding of course.
Hey, if you need a good realtor, call Barry Andrus at ReMax in Draper. He'll go to Orem, he's very patient, and he's great at the negotiations. I think he more than earned his fee with us but he never complained as he showed us house after house. He was very good at pointing out problems to spare us from grief, and by the end we felt he was our friend.
We had a good laugh a time or two about things we found in houses we looked at, like the media room/bomb shelter that had no indoor entry, or the "radiant" heated garage, that was literally a fan blowing through a car radiator, hooked up to an incinerator-heated water tank.
We never felt like he was just trying to make the sale, but that he wanted to help us find the house just right for us.
wv: ofpwe The way my head feels right now---too tired to think of a meaning! I'm going off to watch a movie in my comfy house.
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