Preparation for home buying
House Hunting
I've been spending way too much time on sites like Zillow browsing the real estate market. I've been attending a first time home buyers class every Wednesday. I'm meeting with a potential buyer agent this Friday. I'm meeting with a potential mortgage broker next week.
Looking to buy a place is like looking for a rental, except that once you buy you're stuck with it for a very extended period of time. Furthermore, you won't get first time home buyer benefits next time around. This makes the process of finding a place that much more difficult. Factor this in with the fact that I want a place in some fairly well-to-do neighborhoods that can be fairly pricey. Places that very rarely have short sales and almost never have foreclosures. Places where prices make you wonder if the housing market ever went down in the first place.
I qualify for the Massachusetts Soft Second loan program, so hopefully that will help me a little financially. I'm trying to get something that I can both afford and that will be useful to live in for the next 10 or so years.
The entire process is -
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NYC Trip
My Mother and I have a trip to NYC planned for late Oct / early Nov. We're going to see The Daily Show and The Colbert Report while we are there. Mom also wants to see some Broadway play while we are in the area. I'm sure we'll also be eating out at nice places and doing touristy things. It should be a fun little vacation.
I've been spending way too much time on sites like Zillow browsing the real estate market. I've been attending a first time home buyers class every Wednesday. I'm meeting with a potential buyer agent this Friday. I'm meeting with a potential mortgage broker next week.
Looking to buy a place is like looking for a rental, except that once you buy you're stuck with it for a very extended period of time. Furthermore, you won't get first time home buyer benefits next time around. This makes the process of finding a place that much more difficult. Factor this in with the fact that I want a place in some fairly well-to-do neighborhoods that can be fairly pricey. Places that very rarely have short sales and almost never have foreclosures. Places where prices make you wonder if the housing market ever went down in the first place.
I qualify for the Massachusetts Soft Second loan program, so hopefully that will help me a little financially. I'm trying to get something that I can both afford and that will be useful to live in for the next 10 or so years.
The entire process is -
- Exciting - At the end of this entire process, I'll own the property I live in. No more dealing with crappy landlords. I can actually make improvements to the place I buy. I can paint the wall any damned color I want the wall to be. Work I put into my house will benefit me later when I sell it. I know owning a house isn't all sunshine and rainbows, but IMHO its a hell of a lot better than renting. Especially for someone like me who has chosen exactly where to settle down for a giant chunk of his life.
- Depressing - If there was ever anything that put you in your economic class, it's house buying. It's very frustrating seeing the outrageous prices in certain nice neighborhoods you'd like to live in. Compromise seems to be the name of the game. I can't have exactly what I want. That's for people with far deeper pockets than me.
- Time Consuming - I haven't even gone to physically look at places yet and it's a giant hassle. As the first paragraph of my post make clear, I've been spending more than a little time trying to get this right. The next couple of months will determine a lot about my next decade or so. So I'm trying to put in the necessary work in and get it right the first time.
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NYC Trip
My Mother and I have a trip to NYC planned for late Oct / early Nov. We're going to see The Daily Show and The Colbert Report while we are there. Mom also wants to see some Broadway play while we are in the area. I'm sure we'll also be eating out at nice places and doing touristy things. It should be a fun little vacation.