House Buying // Part 3
Part 3: Leaps & Bounds... All of a sudden!
In my last update, we were looking at being in a house by year-end.
That idea has been tossed to the wind, and we are now hoping to buckle down and push this process to LEASE end. Like be in a house by the end or middle of June. At the very least, we are hoping to close on a house by then. Are we crazy? Yes. Probably.
Here's what happened:
- We met with a mortgage loan officer (who was the nicest lady ever), and she got us pre-qualified for a mortgage. We discovered that the price-range we had been looking in was exactly the right range to be in, so that was great news. She showed us two options for loans, and both were similar, so choosing between them won't be rocket science.
- While meeting with the loan officer, a buying agent was also present at the office. She seemed near in age to us and our loan officer recommended her, pointing out that as a less experienced Realtor, she would take the time to show us homes in our range. Older, more established Realtors may find us a bit pithy. So only a few days later, after some discussion we decided she would better understand our needs (as a fellow young person) and be more open to our lack of knowledge as first time home buyers. So we signed an agreement to designate her as our Realtor and so far we are very happy! She never makes me feel like I'm asking a stupid question and told me that our short time frame is perfectly doable. Her confidence is calming to me!
- We can start house showings in a couple of weeks. She said that showing us homes that are on the market now would be useless because most probably already have offers on them and we wouldn't have much of a chance at putting an offer down. The housing market is INSANE right now!
So that's the latest. I cannot believe how fast this all happened, but am glad that our months of super-stress will now be compacted into a few short months instead of almost a year! (Again, are we crazy? Probably)
Like I said, the goal is to be in, or closing, on a house by the end of June. However, if that doesn't happen we have a little back-up plan:
If, by May 20th we have no prospects and the market doesn't seem to be in our favor, we're going to start a new lease somewhere else and spend a few months gathering our thoughts and creating a new time-frame. If it's May 20th and we haven't found something, but the prospects are promising and we have a good chance of finding something in a month or two, we have some awesome friends who offered some space in their home for any overlapping of time between our lease ending and getting into a house (so awesome of them, right?!).
So now, I will be spending lots of time with our Realtor, weeding out bad homes before Tom can jump in on showings. I'm actually really excited to hang out with her because she's really honest and fun! Hopefully my next post will be some ramblings on the houses we've looked at and how awful and/or great they are and what it's like putting an offer down! Stay tuned and say a little prayer that there aren't too many bumps along the way and I don't become a crying, emotional, train wreck... haha!
Any new advice for this stage? Do you think we're crazy? As a point of reference for how quickly things change, in my first post I mentioned that we met with a Realtor and would use them going forward... WRONG!
