House Hunt

I've been meaning to write this post but I didn't know what to write.

At first, I was upset. But now, I am better/ok with it.

Here's what happened. We saw a house that we both loved. We saw so much potential in this house, I already knew which bedroom would be mine and the babies room, Ben's office, etc. So afterwards, Ben and I sat down and took a hard look at our finances.

We realized that we can't swing it, financially. We aren't eligible for any first time home buyer assistance programs. So that means that we would have to come up with the full 20% down to avoid PMI.

So we are going to go with our backup plan, to stay put in our apartment and save our money. Thankfully our place is big enough that we can swing having a baby here. It's not ideal, but it's the right decision to make.

We know what it costs to live in our apartment, we've been here long enough. With a house, we don't know all the expenses and we didn't want to become house poor.

We talked with our lovely realtor, and she thinks that we are making a smart decision. She also said that she will keep sending us listings and if we want to go see anything, she'll arrange it for us.

At first, I cried... more so because of the hormones, but I was upset, I had done what you shouldn't do, and go and fall in love with a house. Which may I say, is hard to do when you need to picture yourself living there? I called one of my BFF's that night and vented to her. But the more time that has passed, I've gotten more comfortable with it.

And it is the smart/right decision. Now that it's been made, I must say it's been kind of a relief for us, we have been waiting on a lot of decisions because we didn't know where we were going to be living. Now that it's decided, we can focus on setting up our second bedroom as our nursery. Which has gotten me excited.

I am happy with our decision. Life is going to be filled with tough decisions. I love that my husband and I can talk and rationalize things. To weigh the pros and cons of things and try to make a reasonable decision.

18 Weeks!

All too quickly time is flying by! As of Saturday I am 18 weeks pregnant. I've got an ultrasound and doctor's appointment this week. And I've got to be sure to let the technician know that we do NOT want to know the gender. Hopefully they don't let anything slip. I hope that everything is normal and progressing fine. I can't believe we are almost at the halfway point.

I am definitely showing now. There isn't any hiding it anymore. I've had some feelings, like flutters or fake gas as most of the blogs/websites report. It's a weird feeling for sure. I am still burping a lot. There is a lot of gas involved with pregnancy. I never imagined how much it changes the REST of your body.

We are also looking at some houses. Everything we've looked at has been a HUGE step up from the first house we looked at, the one with the holes in the walls and was basically destroyed. As we thought, some of the houses in our price range have come on the market only to quickly go under agreement. So we are trying to keep ourselves as free as we can in order to go see houses at a moment's notice.

I love our realtor, she is great to work with and really gets us and what we are looking for. But she's also not hesitant to give her opinion about a property. And she's got the experience to back it up.

One frustration has been one house that we all like and want to see, has been horrible about setting up a showing. We've tried for 3 Sundays now with no dice. So we are hoping that on Friday we'll be able to see it. We really like this property and where it's located, so we are hoping we can at least get inside and see it to see if it's for us.

The one house we saw today, I will say, was very nice. We are waiting to hear back, as there are 2 other offers in on the house, and we don't want to get into a bidding war with other potential buyers. It's easy to say not to get emotionally tied up into a house, but it's hard to actually live that. Even harder when pregnant and hormonal.

I can see myself living in that house, it's very nice and only needs a small amount of work done to make it liveable. And some additional projects to be done over the next few years. Enough to keep Ben busy, that's for sure. And the neighborhood and town is quite lovely and would be great for raising kids.

Here's to hoping we can find something! I'd like to be moved in before this baby comes. Ben and I both agreed that if we aren't closed or close to closing by late July that we'll probably wait until after the baby before trying again. It would really suck to try and move while so close to the baby coming.

Be very quiet! We are hunting houses!

So I didn't win the $640 million Mega Millions jackpot last week. Le sigh, Ben and I had our dream houses all picked out, his and hers of course.

But what we did do is meet with a realtor on Saturday. We drove by a couple houses, and there was one that we really liked. So when we met with the realtor later on, we asked to see it. We were able to get in and see the place, it was a foreclosed house and the previous owners trashed it. Most of the walls had big holes in them, some of the bedroom doors were kicked in half. What would have been the master bedroom had a deadbolt on it! It was just really in rough shape. And we came to the conclusion that it has the potential to be a beautiful house, but it would take a fair amount of money and time. Two things that we are limited on. So we passed.

Our realtor this morning sent us a couple more listings, Ben and I liked the looks of them so I believe the plan is to go check them out on Saturday. 

I am not a big fan of house hunting, I want to find a house but it's just trying to find something that fits what we want and what we need. For the right price of course. My biggest sticking point has been schools. I want to make sure where ever we are that we are in a good school district.

But both of us would like to find a house and be settled before the baby comes. Our apartment right now is big enough where we could have a baby there, but it's not ideal. That being said, we aren't going to buy a house just for the sake of being in a house, we want to make sure its the right situation for us.

We are excited about this next step, but we want to be cautious and make sure it's the right step for us.