Day #1 of house hunting

Today was our first day in search for "The One"....we had 7 homes to check out and we really liked 2 of them. One we didn't even go inside, and one was a foreclosure and the homeowners pretty much destroyed it so it was a 100% gut. Here are a few pics from the two homes we have still on our list...oh and like I said, it's still pretty early in the game so both of these homes will probably be sold soon. We would've wanted to make changes but they are atill considered "move-in" ready.

So here is our #1 option:

We would want to completely re-do the exterior.

We would want to remove a lot of interior walls to open the space up.

We would want to completely renovate the kitchen.

We would want to expand the master en suite into the closet and build another closet with access from the bathroom.

And that about sums it up...we really love this additional living room in the back, we could totally see the family over for bbq's and the holidays.

And here is option #2:

Now this home is pretty turn key, but it needs a few changes. The master en suite has access from the bedroom and the main hallway. This might be weird but I don't want our guest using the master, I want them using the hall bath so I would want to close that door off and we could use that area for either a hall closet or closet in the bathroom for towels. 

The dining room is a little closed off so we would want to remove one wall. 

The fridge is located in the breakfast nook which is very odd, so we haven't come up with any kind of solution for that.

The 1/2 bath is near the utility room so to get to it you would see the utility room...which would mean it would have to stay clean at all times! 

Both homes had huge yards so we know Rylee will be excited about that!

TaTa for now!

How to buy a home....

I've been receiving a lot of emails of people asking how we are going about buying a home, so this post is about our process and an update of where we are now.

We got really lucky since we have a family friend in the mortgage business so he is doing all of our important financial "stuff", as I like to call it. We got a few other quotes just so we could compare the best deals, and sure enough our family friend has the best deal for us. We aren't ready to buy so we didn't request to be pre-approved, we just want to know what price range we will be in so we got pre-qualified. Which most realtors require you to do before they start spending time showing you homes you might not be able to afford. 

You might be surprised with what you pre-qualify for, or at least we were. We knew what we wanted to spend in our mortgage so we worked backwards and figured out what price range that puts us in. Well we were qualified for A LOT more, so be careful to not use every penny they qualify you for. Or do and pay a large mortgage every month. We decided to go with a cheaper fixer upper for many different reasons: our mortgage is cheaper, we can renovate over time, and we can put our own touch on it and make it ours. And with a cheaper mortgage we don't have to worry about other finances (bills, groceries, gas, 2 car payments, school loans, toll bills, etc) and we can put more money in savings for a wedding, travels, etc...

We also are buying a used home and don't have 20% to put down, so we qualified for a FHA loan and only have to put down 3.5%. There are also a lot of renovation loans out there, but we have decided not to go with the FHA 203k loan because most mortgage companies don't have that because it's so risky. Our mortgage lender we are going with doesn't offer that and we don't want to go with anyone else. And we don't want to pay a ton of interest on a $10,000 loan when we can save money over time and pay $10,000 cash to do renovations.

Now on to the realtor process. We got really lucky here as well since my sisters childhood friend, Carrie Ingram with Keller Williams, is a local realtor and we know she will take care of us. We start our house hunting process tomorrow and we are so excited! It's still a little early in the game but our realtor wants to get an idea of our likes and dislikes. 

We had an idea of what area we wanted to live in but right now there is only one home (in our price range) in that area, so we had to expand our search. We are now convinced that our plan b area is now where we want to live! We love the area, and we can get a lot more land than where we first started looking. I didn't know much about this area and it's a lot further drive for me to work, but we would rather have land and be in a safe area. The drive is actually shorter than my drive now and I like my quiet time in the car. So my drive is about 35 minutes and Chance's is about 15 minutes.

Stay tuned and follow us on our house hunt tomorrow!