Since my last post, it has been a month of ups and downs. We started by looking at rentals and were very disappointed. To get into something clean, comfortable, and in a nice neighborhood, we would have to have paid what we currently pay for mortgage. This was unfortunate as we had this dream of saving tons of money. Even though nobody can really predict what the housing market is going to do, the current prediction is that housing prices will still drop while interested rates rise. With this said, we felt that is really made no sense in renting to save in costs - in fact it could cost more with the two moves. Finally, the thought of two moves this next year - with a new baby - was not sitting well with me. Not at all.
The house hunt then started at full speed, resulting in my obsession with the MLS. There is not a lot out there currently (holidays and all), but, as it often works out, we kept getting drawn back to the first one we looked at. We went back to see it four times, to be exact. It's an estate sale, and it is apparent that the sweet couple that lived there took a lot of pride in their home. Even though it currently has about 50/50 what we want, we love the layout, natural light, nice neighborhood (former "country club estates"...oo-la-la ), mountain views, and great bones. The two things I keep imagining with this house is the room for the kids to run around and the location for the hot tub for optimal mountain views. The downside is that it needs a face lift inside and out, but we figure that will come with time. There is nothing that we can't live with now, so when we get more money, we can make it super cool to our taste. It also has small bedrooms, which honestly was my greatest negative, but the footage is made up in the family living areas, so I am thinking (hoping) that this will be worth the trade-off.
The best news is that it is between our schools, the lot is twice our size, and we talked them waaay down in price. Our mortgage will now be a whopping $3.oo dollars greater! They also are willing to close the day we close, which means we have two weeks from now to be out... and in. I am taking a break from packing to write this, so I better get back to it. Pictures to come!
Update: Just spent 2 hours at our new home and fell in love with it! The inspection passed with flying colors. The inspector's first words were, "This is a cool house! I used to re-do houses in this era and would have had a lot of fun with this layout". That made us feel good. Jaden also loved his new room and was already running the route (can run a circle route through the rooms) just as I had imagined. :) My instincts did not fail me on this one!
