You know when you finally decide to take that big step in a direction that means ‘responsibility’? It’s kind of like teetering on the edge of a cliff forever…… finally someone comes up behind you and gives you a big ol’ push over the edge. There you are….. totally free-falling, no idea what to do, with a how-to manual clutched in your hand.
“Cliff-diving for Dummies”.
Really, it’s “House-Buying for Dummies”.
I think the tenants that moved in above us finally pushed me over the edge. M, apparently, hasn’t noticed them at all. All I hear is ‘thump thump thump’. And then there are our new neighbours across the courtyard, who bbq right in front of our living-room window. Awesome. I might as well just invite myself.
I guess M and I kind of keep to ourselves. We are just private kind of people that are not on first name basis with all of our apartment neighbours. We also do not party with them. Or drink with them randomly, or really hang out with any of them at all. You wouldn’t want to either.
Now ‘house’ neighbours are a different kind of story. If you are buying, you will be friendly with your neighbours. The end.
So as we blunder, slowly, through this whole initial process it’s like my brain just wants to shut down.
I look at homes online. I email our realtor things I think we’d like. She emails me back. I talk to M about when we want to look at them….. and thats when things seem to slow down for us.
We want to. But…..we also want to do everything else but physically look at them. We also are ultra picky. And have also put a time-limit on this whole thing. We are determined to take advantage of that tax credit. And also don’t want to renew our lease, which is up in October. And also we seem to be quite picky.
We don’t mind a little bit rundown. But not too rundown. We don’t mind a foreclosure, but would prefer one that comes with a pool, a pool that is sparkling clean. A 3/2 is at the bottom of the list, but a 4/2 would be better. And all of this needs to fall into a rather srict budget, and ever stricter neighbourhood that we have outlined.
And this is all tentative. Sometimes I think to myself “What the hell are we doing?!?!”
And then I think “Oh,right. We hate renting and want a house. And are firmly in our 30’s. And have a baby. And this is the next logical step.”
And so, yet again, we are picky. And possibly (a) pain(s) in the ass (es).
*sigh* This is exhausting to even type about….
One Lovely Atlantic Mama and family 
Well.. Random areas turn ghetto fast. It’s bad. Prolly not in your ideal.. But there are a LOT of adorable places over by me and between my and John’s houses.. Not too badly priced either.
We started looking at houses when I got pregnant. We moved in when I was 7 months pregnant. It took that long to find a house! We looked at houses every weekend and some evenings for about 5 months. Lots of offers and counter offers, a couple inspections that vetoed the house. Then our realator who was probably so tired of us got us in as the 1st showing on a house and we bought it. We sold it that fast too! You gotta start looking and sometimes what looks bad online is actually good and vice versa of course. Like one that looked ok and when we went into it I remember asking is the floor on a slant or am I just pregnant and dizzy? The floor was not level. Fun fun fun!!! Get cracking could take forever. You’re lucky though, buying this house we had a 5 day buying trip from the force and that was is. Get looking, it’s the fun part and you’ll have a lot to blog about.