So we're buying a house!
Justin and I went to see a mortgage broker today and it went well. I'd already provided some info to the broker over the phone before our meeting to get things started, but we had some tax and payroll paperwork to drop off and we also wanted to go through the calculations to figure out how much we could afford. After running the numbers we settled on the maximum house that we could afford, which was pretty much on base with what I thought - enough to buy a townhouse or rancher, and we'd be getting an FHA fixed loan. Luckily our interest rate is also pretty low, since the market is down right now. It really is a buyers market - after we told him that we wouldn't be able to put anything down and we didn't want to pay closing costs, the broker said not to worry about it because the sellers are so desperate to sell that they are covering the up front costs. The broker then said we would go one step beyond the pre-approval and get a comittment letter put together, which would have more standing than a pre-approval when it was time to put down an offer. So we signed a whole bunch of loan paperwork (like 25 pages) and that was it! According to the broker, we should have the letter by next week. Now we just need to find a realtor and start looking. It's not going to be easy to find something affordable, close enough to Columbia, and in a decent area, but I know that with enough patience and creativity, we'll find our house. I can't believe we're finally doing this!