Our (RIGHT NOW) Dream Home

House hunting has not been fun.  I don't enjoy it.  I possibly could very much though...if our price range was up $20-40,000 more.. :)  Yes, that would be fun!

Cade and I have driven past a lot of houses and through plenty of neighborhoods in Boise, Meridian, Kuna and Nampa.  MOST have been quite sad neighborhoods, some have been "do-able", and a few have been just alright.  We were getting quite excited about the alright neighborhoods.  Neighborhood has been a huge deal for me.  I don't know what I'll be doing in the future, if I'll be able to stay home with my kids, or if I'll have to work.  At this point I want to stay home and will stick with that plan for as long as is possible.  It would be nice to feel safe in my neighborhood, be able to take walks with the kids and not feel nervous or creeped out.  In our price range though, it would seem that we aren't able to afford warm, fuzzy, safe neighborhoods.  And really, some houses have been alright..but I haven't loved really any of them.  Do we buy a house just because its "the right time to buy"?

Renting doesn't solve the problem though.  It's possible renting could cost more than a mortgage, especially when you have a pet..

DEAR NEWLYWEDS-
Don't buy a pet until you have bought a house.  Landlords no likey, resulting in your options becoming very limited.  But not only that, if you are in an apartment with a dog, you have to take it out to go potty and that's just not fun.  Even more not fun when you realize you have a baby on the way who could possibly be sleeping when the dog needs to go potty.  Super. 
If you decide to buy anyways, and then find a great place that finally accepts pets..enjoy a wonderful non-refundable pet deposit and/or possible monthly charge on your rent. 

I would have probably held off on the cute puppy had I realized all of this....(oh well, we still like our dog).

Renting is kind of a bummer deal when you think about putting money into nothing instead of your own house.  There are other cons to renting but at the same time, when you rent you aren't buying a crappy neighborhood and stuck there for 5-10 or more years.  If it isn't a great place, you can move in a year or less.  I like that fact.  But either way, I just haven't felt confident.

There are decent houses right now near our price range but they are short sales and I don't feel confident about going through that process just yet.  Maybe in the future.  I've kind of given up on the idea of buying.  Houses are going fast, investors are buying like crazy, and whats left is not what I want to be stuck in for 10 years.

Since I had no confidence in either direction we still went and looked Friday at a $59,000  two bed & one bath townhome for sale, mostly just out of curiosity, and hated it...but it lead to a conversation with our realitor where we decided to give a certain location another shot.  Cade and I headed that way and drove through a couple of neighborhoods and thought maybe we'd like to look at a few of the houses that we saw.  The just alright kind of houses and neighborhoods.  After calling our realitor the next day one house was already pending and the other two I think ended up being short-sales. 

A little while later our realitor gave us a few other houses we might want to look at out that way and one I immediately LOVED, and didn't care to even consider the others.  So we drove to the house and felt so comfortable in the neighborhood.  Loved the neighborhood really.  She showed us the house later that day and I loved it even more.  By a long shot the best of any of the houses we've looked at or driven by, and oddly, well in our price range.

Oh but the DOWNSIDE.....we have to bid on it and if we bid over the listed price, it has to come out of pocket.  (Yes it's a HUD home, but a nice one).  Sooo....realizing there are people out there who have more money than we do & shady investors who aren't suppose to bid on this house, but could still and get away with it...we still put our tiny sad little bid in yesterday.  I would be lying if I said I wasn't excited still.  It is exciting!  And so sad because I haven't figured out how I'm going to deal when we hear we were outbid on Monday.  I might already be attached, it's possible that in my head its already ours, and I may have already mentally moved my furniture and pictures in...I'm in so much trouble.  Oh the long week I have ahead just thinking about this.