Ahh, yes. You may be wondering how the house hunt is going. Well, I guess I can say its... going...
Our car would say its going stupendously given the fact that it gets ridden in every weekend for lots of miles. Okay, probably not even lots of miles necessarily, but we literally spend hours in the car. We bring snacks, drinks and even stop for potty breaks. We are hard core. We just drive, drive around.
We have even stopped into a couple of open houses on the weekend. This tends to be a bad idea for me, because I get to excited to easily and need to take a step back. We can't afford to buy a house just this instant, so no need getting uber excited about what's out there right now because there's not a darn thing I can do about it at the current moment.
So, update on the downpayment. Things are mostly bright there. I'll go into more detail down below, but we will have 20% down in the bank by end of March. So that means, we'll get a realtor at the end of March! Yay! I'm very proud of this feat, because we've been tossing money at this thing hard core. I haven't been able to do my usual shopping in what feels like FOREVER. The budget has been pushed to the limit and we've had to be really mindful of we spend our money one, so I'm really proud of ourselves.
On the downside, we have to increase our budget if we want to live in the city. By in the city I'm referring to inside the loop (610) in the Heights area or even a couple of exits out of 610 on the west side. To live in a townhome type place, we're going to have to increase our budget. Meaning, I think the 15-year mortgage is going to be near impossible. This makes me sad. So, I'm kind of at a loss right now. It's either going to be increase your budget or move to the suburbs. And with gas prices outrageously high right now, that doesn't really seem to make sense. It's just hard to make yourself spend 2 hours in the car every day for no real reason... it's not like your benefiting kids to live in a great neighborhood because well, we don't have any of those. (Though, if you were to read my facebook, you will notice that almost, what fees like, every girl I know is having a baby or just had a baby.. so there's clearly something in the water).
So, that's pretty much where Robert and I stand. In general, I think Rob and I agree that it doesn't make sense to live far away from where we work and the places we like to hang out at, especially if we are going to be buying $4-$5 gallon of gas. Plus, they say houses inside the loop are more of a investment because people are always looking to live in the city so their value will increase.
The only thing that worries me living in the city, is that like I said before, Houston has no zoning laws. Most of the townhomes are in industrial parts of the city. Granted, thats definitely better than having the homeless rome around because we went down to "Midtown" to look at slightly more affordable places that is between downtown and the Medical Center and that really scared me. The industrial land is looking far more better. But, its definitely something to get used to. When you drive by's of these places its like a REALLY great townhouses, then pipe supply, welding shop, great townhouses, manufacturers, shack, great townhomes. There might even be a really nice house next to what I would consider a shack and then a really nice townhome neighborhood. It's exhausting. But, I'm not joking.
The first picture is of the townhome and the second picture is what's next to it.
I'm trying to convince my family to come down and visit and help me drive around because you just cannot believe it until you see it. For example, see this pictures. Nothing like this exists back in Arkansas. It makes it overwhelming. If we are going to live in the city, we'd also like to live close to the Heights Hike & Bike trail. That way we won't have to drive anywhere to go biking. That would be nice.
We've also discovered that some of these places have rooftop terraces. Those are really cool. Can you imagine living somewhere with a rooftop terrace that you can call your own?? I imagine that we probably won't get one with a rooftop terrace unless one just falls into our lap, but you never know. We'll put it on the "would love to have, but can definitely let go" list.
So anyways, that's where we are. We'll probably take some of March off and not look at houses as much because I think we've almost exhausted driving by the inventory that we can afford. So, we'll need some new listings to pop up. But I think people looking to move in the summer will probably start listing their houses for sale in March or so.
Oh, I should also say that I've got a slight addiction to HAR (Houston Area Real Estate) app on my iPad. I literally just look at the same houses over and over every night. It's quite sad. I sometimes even look at houses on my lunch break at work depending on how busy I am. It's crazy! I've got to lay off. We also calculate our potential mortgage payment over and over. Even while we are at dinner. The waiters probably think we are crazy because we have our phones out discussing possible scenarios and payment options. (No worries, in NO event will our house payment exceed our current rental payment... that would be insane and completely indicate we have fallen off the Dave Ramsey bandwagon. So, if you EVER hear me say that my mortgage payment will be greater than my rent, please shoot me because all is lost.)
Okay, that's about it! Until next time!
