I'm doing 39 things
I would like to preface this blog with this fact: none of the decisions we made was without a tremendous amount of prayer and of seeking God’s will for our lives. We endeavor everyday to follow Him and ask for His guidance in everything we do.
In 2000, my family and I moved back to California. We had been a single income family and we had hoped that the economy in California would allow us to continue to do so without more drastic changes in our lifestyle. We lived here for about a year when we decided that homeschooling was the best option for our children’s education which thereby precluded my wife’s status as “stay-at-home-mom.” It was not economically feasible for us to purchase a home and we had hoped that we could within a few years.
This was not to be.
With the announcement of our town being the choice for the location of the new University we soon saw house prices begin to soar. We knew some people in the real estate market and they all confirmed our suspicion that Bay Area investors were driving up the housing market and the prices. We actually met a few people who moved here, commuted to the Bay Area for a few short years, and then turned this house into a rental while they would move back into (presumably) their primary residence in the Bay Area.
It was soon evident that we would be renting for a very long time.
Around 2006-2008 we saw the housing market peak. People were paying extraordinary prices for houses. We went house shopping one summer, just to see. Anything newly built listed as “affordable” was very cheaply constructed and shoe-horned onto tiny lots. Living in this kind of condition is not for the shy or the claustrophobic. You WILL know your neighbor. Half-million dollar homes did not have the bells and whistles that you would expect from a half-million dollar home. It was just a house, but an expensive one.
We set our sites on staying put in our little rental, that we were quickly out-growing.
As market forces continued to drive the housing market, and the promise of our town becoming a University town, prices continued to climb and become less affordable.
A plethora of reasons could be cited for the housing bubble to burst; but burst it did, with a pop heard across this country.
About October, 2008, we decided that perhaps we could afford to buy a house, but we’d have to adjust our expenses once again. We began the process of finding every unnecessary expense and either eliminate it or reduce it. For every bill that landed in our mail box a phone call was made. We reduced our phone bill, cell phone charges, switched cable TV companies and got fewer channels, we even switched out light bulbs to lower wattage or cheaper fluorescent.
When we shared our “plan” with friends we received a lot of counsel. Our pastor Bruce connected us with a real estate agent, Debbie, and a mortgage lender representative, Scott. In January of 2009 we finally placed a call to these two people so that we could get a better idea of where we stood in the midst of this volatile housing market.
We discovered that it was definitely a buyers market and we found out what we could feasibly afford. So the game is on.
Next: our adventures in house hunting.
