Learn everything I need to know and more about buying my first home

We spent a good month to month and a half researching, reading up, pre-approving, investigating homes, viewing homes, and then finally we write an offer contingent on inspection, pay for the inspection and find the home riddled with issues.

Shortly after Patrick’s car dies, and then some legal drama from our former home in Michigan comes back in the form of a sold vehicle that was never registered by the new owner… which was successfully involved in a hit and run. Good fun.

It’s a good thing we didn’t end up with the house after all, however, house buying, hunting, financing, and all that good stuff, takes up entirely TOO much time. I’m happy to have stopped and given up (given the car situation and all the financial mess that comes with that) and perhaps in a year we’ll try again.

I researched the whole house buying bit from end to end. I even got us a good real-estate agent to help us out and eventually we even put an offer on a house but had to walk away when we found it had termites, a slowly draining septic tank, and lots of surface damage throughout the house (not to mention half the appliances and AC weren’t working).

I keep thinking back to that house now as the one that got away. In the end it was me who wanted to run screaming from it. The house was a fixer upper on the surface… but a renovation when you looked closer. Everything was perfect about it besides the sorry state it was in. I guess that’s what breaks my heart. At this point, nothing new has come up, and we’ve grown very anxious about financing such a big purchase.

My cold feet have turned into a very cynical attitude towards the whole house buying process. I would like a nice sturdy concrete block house before the hurricane season starts up again, but I don’t want the house to be the only thing we can think about due to the huge financial burden it puts on us.

In the end, I know that things will work out, but for now I’m just now sure how. We shall see.

Ha! So, the housing market down here is really bad right now. With our yearly income we can only really afford a house within the $150k-$170k tops… the lowest price for a reasonable house (or so it seems) is $225. Anything listed below that seems to start getting into trailer territory. ack.