Open house weekend

The last couple of weeks have been a real whirlwind of emotion on the home buying front. Last weekend, we went to our first open houses! How fun it was. We made the big mistake of going to a few that were completely out of our price range, and of course fell in love with them. We met a few really nice realtors, and one in particular who we will not be working with. All in all, Saturday and Sunday were really excellent days.

The trouble came Monday when Pat called a mortgage specialist referred to us by one of the agents we had met. They broke some numbers down for us, and we realized that with a mortgage payment, PMI, taxes, and insurance, we don't really want to look at a house that is more than about $205,000. We've been "pre-qualified" for about $300k (haven't done a pre-approval yet), and that dream house we went to see is $254,900. And of course, my initial reaction (because I am dramatic and overly emotional sometimes most of the time) was sadness, and distaste, and, "We shouldn't even be looking at a house, we'll never find anything we like, there is no point to move out of this apartment, I'm going to take a shower."

 Not even the lack of outside basement access is going

to get the builder to drop $50k on the dream house...

Warmed up and clean, I came out of the bathroom feeling ashamed and disappointed in myself. What do you mean, we can't find something we like? Our original budget for a house was about $150,000, and we fell in love with a few at that low price. The whole situation was humbling and put things in perspective for me. We're going to be okay.

The funny part is that about a month and a half ago, when our budget was still around $150k, we waited and waited to go see a house that looked great, but was over by $40 thousand. I finally took us to go see it one night, and it was taken off the market the next morning. Shoulda known then what we know now, because we'd be ALL over that place. Sigh, we'll just have to wait for another one like it to come up.

Ahhh, how we wish we had bought you, 

but there will be others!