This past week, I've gone from work to looking at houses. And let me tell you, it was a very tiring week. Not to mention, I don't even think I read a hundred pages in the whole week (I usually read that much in a day). I'm so glad it's over.
We've gone to a couple of banks to get mortgage preapproval letters. And we found out very quickly that not all banks are created equally. Some are very prejudiced against first time homebuyers. From what I've learned this week, my advice would be to stick with the banks you bank with and local banks. The chain banks were the ones that gave us problems. In a nutshell, they basically told us we needed a 20% downpayment and should never have gone to college if we were planning to buy a house so early. They also recommended we keep renting and save like crazy. While I can see some good in that advice, I can't understand why anyone who has 'owning a home' in their life plan would want to keep renting when rent prices are the same price as owning a house right now...
I have been cooking up a storm lately. Which also gives me more opportunity to damage my hands. Last Sunday, I didn't open the oven door enough and my knuckle hit the inside. A big, ugly blister resulted from that. And then yesterday, my infamous fingers without feelings did another stupid thing. I had the hot pad in my hands while pulling the food out of the oven. But I didn't realize that the hot pad was not centered, and my finger was very much not protected. Needless to say, I had the pan halfway out of the oven before I realized my finger was touching the pan. A nice dull tingle resulted. And it's turned into a lovely blister as well. Good news is I only feel it every once in a while. Bad news is I'm not used to feeling anything in my finger. Ugh, the issues I face while cooking.
Did I mention my car broke down last week? We had just barely begun our search for a new home and had spent a couple of hours looking around our area for other apartments. At that point, moving to another apartment was an option for us. We decided to end our search, grab something to eat from Hardees and go home to relax for the night. While in the drive-thru, my car started smoking. We thought the radiator fluid had leaked out. But that wasn't the problem. We had to tow it to our mechanic and wait for the news. Turns out, our water pump failed. Wasn't cheap to fix...
So why the big interest in moving? Or buying a house? Well, our lease goes up in a couple of months, and the complex wants 60 day notice as to whether you'll stay or go. Problem is, they don't have to give you any notice that your rent's going up. We only had two weeks notice before we have to give them our decision. While we love where we live, we've watched the rent go up every year. And it just doesn't make sense to us to stay if there are other options out there. Especially with our plan of buying a house and the fact that we have a down payment ready and we now have stable jobs. So, our living situation is kind of up in the air right now.
