Smarten Up! Monday: Buying a House

Michael and I are in the process of buying our first house.  It’s scary, exciting, anxiety-ridden, overwhelming and slightly fun all rolled up into a knot in our stomachs.

We have gotten past the house hunting and getting the offer accepted. And, that was the easy part.

This house was only the second one we looked at, but it meets all of our requirements and is a really great deal. So, what’s left?

Well, we are in the process of signing all of the loan and assistance papers and then we have to get the inspections. I thought these would be the easy parts, but they have proven the opposite.

There’s figures to look over and money from here and there that’s going to here and there. There’s this inspection and that one and this one we won’t due. This one is included in closing costs and this one is not. All in all it will still be worth it and in a couple of weeks we will look back and say, “that wasn’t so bad.”

Here are a few things I have learned experientially, which you may or may not already know, but it’s smartened me up.

• Buying a house via an estate sale can be an added bonus.
  • The house is in a great neighborhood with no other houses for sale
    • someone literally had to die for us to get into this neighborhood.
  • The executor of the estate usually has a lot to deal with and they want to get through it as quickly as possible in the midst of their grieving and chaos of following the wishes of their loved one.
    • The took less than asking and paid for the 6% in closing costs in our situation.
• We are buying one of the worst houses in the neighborhood
  • In saying this, its not a bad house, it’s move in ready but it just needs updates as its from the 60′s.
  • As we start to improve this house, it will improve the whole neighborhood.
  • When there comes the day that we will sell this house and build our dream home it will have a lot going for it.
    • We don’t plan on selling for a long time, but when we do the economy will be back to a seller’s market and we will have a lot going for us.
      • updated house, great neighborhood, etc.
• Find a good realtor who knows what you want.
  • We took ours to look at the first house, which turned out to be too problematic but she got a sense of what we were looking for and had a house in mind. We went and looked at that house in that same day. I didn’t really want to because it wasn’t exactly where we wanted but I said yes anyways and here we are buying that house.
• Find a good lender.
  • Our realtor suggested a lender and it has been a great success.
    • When we told her we didn’t have all of the down payment saved up yet and would have to wait she found us a first time home buyer down payment assistance program that matches our money $4 to every $1 we add.
      • We are still in the process of getting this all worked out but it looks like it will.

We still have more to learn about buying a house but so far, it hasn’t been too bad.

Do you have any house buying tips or experiences?