own a home

ok so i need to catch you up on where i am.

i ended up going to the homebuying education orientation. however, i somehow overqualified on the income level.(our company allowed us to gang up on overtime knowing they were about to give us a pay cut, & because of that the program didn’t look back at my past 3 years as i had expected but forecasted my salary based on the first 2 months of this year… haha just my luck)

so with that out the window i felt i had to take some action. do or die.
i went to several showing with my RE agent(buyers broker). i narrowed my search down to a few houses that had some “michael” potential. did some more research comps, neighborhood, etc. & decided on a house to make an offer on.
i made my initial offer on tuesday march 23rd. the seller countered back today. i recountered this afternoon. basically i agreed to their counter with one small minor twist i asked for a little more help with the closing costs*
so now i have started the ball rolling on narrowing down home inspectors, finally deciding on a lender(making em compete), getting quotes on home insurance.
i am sooo excited. & proud of myself!!!

Thinking is not Doing

I am having to play catch up on the home buying process. I am wanting to buy my home before the April 30th tax credit incentive deadline. & with that hanging over my head i am scrambling to know and understand all there is to know about buying a house.

It is important!

Did you know that even 1/4 of 1% of interest could cost thousands of dollars? well, I didn’t. :(

I have very little money saved up for a down payment. (I have a nice 401k, but I really would rather not have to borrow against it)
Luckily, I am a military veteran. So, I have a few more options available to me. VA homeloan. another program is FHA, which is more readily available to non-military as well.

I have come across a free program, for 1st time home buyers, that is supposed to not only educate, but also help financially as well. They help with finding closing cost monies or with finding monies for a down payment. I start the program next Monday March 8th.

It is an “American Dream” to own your own home. However, I had never really given it much thought until about a year ago. I didn’t think about homebuying, mostly because my finances have been in bad shape since my mid 20’s. prior to that the thought wasn’t even on the radar.

Last year, I started toying with the idea of home buying. At that time, I was repairing & rebuilding my credit. I had recently moved to Phoenix believing it to be my final major move. AND the gov’t had just unveiled the ”$8000 tax credit for 1st time buyers” program. (quite an incentive)

*note
thinking about buying a home is not going to help you when it comes time to go throught the process. If you are thinking about it now, I want to highly encourage you to begin researching the whole
process. get an early start now so you will not be cramming later.

Currently, I am in the process of house hunting.

I would like to give you the 411 of the past present & future plans of my search.

I will do so in several entries to keep it less boring

good luck in your own house hunting adventure