A few weeks ago my boyfriend brought up the idea of buying a home because he said he's just wasting money renting our apartment. I agreed with him. So we started our search for our new home.
We started by checking our local cragislist and foreclosure real estate listings. There were a few homes that caught our eye right away, but we weren't sold on anything yet. Especially since we still had to decide to go with either a new home, an older updated home or a home that was cheap enough we could do the updating. Plus we also needed to figure out what we could afford and that in turn would narrow down the homes we could look at.
One of the homes we saw on craigslist really caught our eye. It was a brand new home, just built and it had everything he and I wanted. To make it better there was an open house. So I talked him into actually going and seeing it. Well more like bribed. I said I'd make breakfast for dinner if he got out of bed.
Anyways, we went and saw the house and fell in love with it. We met a realtor there that offered to find the answers to our questions and also pointed us in the direction of a lender to talk to and get an idea of our price range. She suggested setting up a meeting with her to talk about our home needs and plans. We loved the idea especially since she had offered to find answers to our questions about the new home.
The week went by and my boyfriend and I continued with our online house hunt. When we finally met with the realtor again, she had most of the answers to our questions, so we decided to make her OUR realtor. She took down information on what we wanted in a home. Like how many bedrooms and bathrooms, location, amenities, stories, etc. From the information we gave her she was able to make a list of homes for us to browse through.
On that list were 33 homes. We picked 9 that we actually wanted to see in person as well as get more info about the model home we saw since we had thought of more questions. Of those 9 houses 2 of them were knocked off the list right away because of HOA, we didn't want to bother with it. Then another 2 were knocked off when my mom and I drove past them and saw the area they were in. Yet another 2 more were knocked off because the realtor said one of them was just bad and another had already been sold. That left 3. 1 of those 3 was the model home we wanted to see again.
So our realtor set up a time for us to go see the model home again as well and a 2nd model home in that subdivision. We went through both model homes again and still LOVED them especially the first one we saw. After that we saw 2 more homes. 1 that had some updates done and another that needed updates, but was in a good location.
My boyfriend and I finished the day feeling overwhelmed and a little undecided. We sat down and really talked things out and came to a decision.
For the price, style and location the new home was the way to go. That way we can decide right now what we want and not have to worry to much about repairs and the like. We told our realtor this is what we wanted to pursue since this was a great opportunity for us.
We met with her yesterday as well as the listing agent for that sub-division. We talked back and forth and finally wrote up a contract.
So today my boyfriend went in, signed the contract and put the deposit down for our new home. We will meet with the builders next week to finalize a few details about price, changes, etc.
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