Of House and Home

Ok, so I just wanted to get this all down to that I will never, ever, never, ever forget the hellish stress that has been these last 10 days. A good/bad hellish stress, mind you.

We went to the Parade of Homes on a whim on Saturday, February 12th. It was the first day and we got the schedule with our paper. I took a look, found a couple of areas that looked like they might be doable for us down the road, and off we went. We found some we liked, but were too expensive, others that might be options, and then we stepped into the one. I prefaced our arrival by saying (mostly to myself) "now remember, this house is valued at $427,000, but there are other homes from $310, so there are other options". Then we walked into the kitchen (from the mud room) and I turned to Chad and said "I want this so bad". I was a goner. The house is a nice open floor plan, which works great for the lifestyle that we lead. It has 3 bedrooms with a loft (for an office), as well as an egress window in the basement if we want to finish that with another room someday. The dining room has pillars which adds some character that I think lacks in some new homes. It was gorgeous, and it was roughly $100K out of our price range. So, we looked at the other floorplans and took some literature to peruse. In the car, I looked at the floorplan and realized that the base price was $327K!!! Now that was a helluva lot closer to our budget! Not comfortably in it, but butting right up to it anyway.

My sister was out of town and getting back on Sunday. I left her a message, and when she called me back, I asked her if she would be willing to run out there and tell us what she thought of this house (she is an interior designer, so I knew she could tell us how they fit another $100K into the house). We were getting worried that land wasn't included in the base price, and that would really take us out of the running. So Lin stepped into the kitchen and said "well, I can tell you right now that about $30K was put into the kitchen". I blew out a huge hunk of air that I hadn't realized I was holding. Lin liked the floorplan as well and we discussed some options. Chad and I had kind of figured that if we kept upgrades to a minimum, we could maybe swing this house. And I got a job. That would definitely help, and my job would probably cover the increase in our mortgage. Great, everything was ticking along!

We made an appointment to meet with the real estate agent on Wednesday, the 16th, to go over options and see how expensive our tastes really were. We opted out of the $15K bonus room and the $1K vaulted ceiling in the master suite. We were just pretending, so we really tried to not look at the pricing when she asked what we wanted. I wanted to upgrade the vanity top in the master bath, just for purely selfish reasons. Chad wanted to insulate the garage, since they sheetrock anyway and if you wanted to insulate later, it would be hard to do. We did no upgrade to the carpet itself, but to the pad. So, minimal things. Then we walked through the house again (third time in less than a week) and took a look around. And I realized that that vaulted ceiling was pretty cool in the master bedroom.

We went home and obsessed. Or I obsessed and Chad tried to get me to quit obsessing. We decided that we would wait until my job interview. If my interview was good, we would be able to put $500 down to hold our lot. We had already decided that we didn't want to wait for the next bit of lots to be openend. That would put us closer to Feb 2006 to a closing (we had ideally wanted to moved in Sept/Oct 2006) but would also mean moving in the winter. Selling our current house over the holidays. And that the prices would go up (they went up everytime they realized more lots). If we went with one of the lots currently available, we would be rushed in selling this house, but would also be getting equity before the foundation was poured.

On Friday the 18th, I got the job. Chad still wanted to slow down. "A week ago we were fine where we are and knew nothing about this!" he would say. And I totally agreed, but it was a week later and this was reality. We both liked the house. The location was great for Chad, as it was closer to his work and his aging grandparents. It kind of sucked for me, since I am so close to my family and will be about 30 min from my sister and almost an hour from my mom, but I was willing to give it a go. Anyway, I said to Chad "I went for the job to get the house. I got the job, now let's get the house".

So, Saturday afternoon, before Chad and I were going out on a date, we dropped off the $500. We then set up the signing of the purchase agreement for Friday (February 25th) at 4 pm.

Next step was finding out if we could get a mortgage. Ok, so we were pretty sure we could, but you never know. Chad talked to the guy, and we were pre-approved on just Chad's salary on Tues. We then set up to meet with him for Wed to discuss our options.

Yesterday at 2:45 we met with the guy, Scott. We have several options we are chewing on right now. The first is a 7 year ARM, the second is an interest-only mortgage, and the third would be the regular 30 year. I just put in a call to our financial planner about the interest only. Basically, we would just put that money that would normally go to the principal, into an investment for several years. I want to talk to Joel (f.p.) and see if he thinks that is a good idea, and how long he thinks we should do that for before refinancing/paying down our principal. If he doesn't think that is a great idea, we would probably go with the 7 year ARM. The other thing to consider would be to lock into an interest rate now. They have this extended thing you can do for new builds, where you lock in now, and if the price is lower in 60 days before closing or whatever, you can take that for no penalty. We just have to put 1% of the mortgage amount down, and then we get that back at closing (and would probably cover all of our closing costs). So that is the other thing we are considering right now.

Other than that, we sign the purchase agreement on Saturday (the real estate agent had to change it). We have decided on the bonus room (my mom offered to loan us the money for that, since it is nearly impossible to add later), the vaulted ceiling, and a green exterior. We need to know all of that on Sat (they won't let two of the same houses, nor of the same color, next to each other. Pretty cool, huh?) at the signing. And then from there, who knows. This is all moving SO fast, and I am still waiting for something to happen that doesn't make it all doable. I really want this, yet sometimes question if we aren't making a bad decision. I just don't know. It seems like such a big step, even for a planner like me. But I guess big purchases are, right?