Home Owner......NOT!

Well, I thought we were well on our way to being homeowners. In these tough economic times we were going to take full advantage of the situation and get an awesome house that we probably wouldn't be able to touch in most other circumstances. And honestly, going in, I had no intention on really getting in to a house. I figured we wouldn't find anything as nice as base housing in the price range we were looking for. I was going to be totally detached from the whole thing and just look with an open mind. And then we found the house.

It was small at 1265 sqft. And it had 3 bedrooms which meant the girls were going to have to share at some point. It didn't have a formal dining area. And it didn't have a fence yet.

It was on 2.14 acres, it had a finished attached 2 car garage that would have made an awesome master suite one day. It had berber carpet in the bedrooms, it had slate tile in the bathrooms, and wood flooring in the rest of the house. All of the main living areas were in the front half of the house, bathrooms and bedrooms on the back half of the house. The kitchen was beautiful with tiled countertops and all stainless steel appliances, recessed lighting and a ceiling fan. There were ceiling fans in every room. Crown molding throughout the house, granite countertops in the bathrooms. Both the living room and master bedroom exited out onto the patio, which would have been a lovely place for a hot tub. There was plent of lighting on the outsides of the house.

Our counter of their counter offer was accepted our application was accepted at our bank, all of the paperwork was set, our home inspection was to be today. But Friday we backed out of the deal.

All of the hopes and dreams I had started allowing myself to have about the house, gone. I had been a little worried about the size, but was sure we could make it work for us, for such a beautiful house with so much potential at the price and interest rate we were getting. Eventually we were going to do the garage and add a detached garage, do some landscaping, make some memories. And best of all, we'd have had it paid off before we were 50. We would have owned something worth almost twice as much as what we were going to pay for it. And the construction looked solid. You can't say that about many houses these days. We wouldn't have had anyone in our business, very few neighbors.

The housing market and us

I wrote a little bit about this on MySpace the other day, but I wanted to talk some more about this. The housing market is in a really bad place right now. And really, I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry for the people who didn't read all the fine print and all the people who just assumed they would be making $400, $500, $1000 more a month to be able to cover their mortgage payment when it ballooned out of control. Nobody thought it would be so bad. I did. If you've listened to me talk about houses and Real Estate over the last 5-8 years, you would have heard me say the bubble is going to burst, the bottom is going to fall out as soon as these adjustable mortgages adjust. These houses aren't worth $250,000 or more. It's absolutely ridiculous. Now, as much as I said all of that, I know most people only heard me with half an ear or didn't hear me at all, or just plain didn't want to believe it. I mean, the husband and I did make an awful Real Estate decision ourselves, and we wouldn't be where we are today, more than likely, if my parents hadn't bailed us out. Honestly, I never expected the bailout, I am very grateful and relieved for it, and it answered a lot of our prayers, but I didn't expect it. I sure didn't expect the government to bail us out of our stupid decision. Hopefully, it's all worked out now and eventually the future will show that it was to everyone's benefit. I continually worry about it and hope for that anyway.

We are now in a position that we can put a nice size down payment on a house and we are pre-approved for a decent amount, and we can get a decent rate with a good payment on a 15 year fixed rate home. That's right folks, if we find the right place, we could finally own our own home outright, shortly after the husband retires! He might even stay in just a little bit longer if it helps us pay off the house. And while retiring in Twentynine Palms wasn't the original plan, we are flexible if it's the right house. So, we've gotten our pre-approval, we've been in contact with our bank who has a program where they will set us up with a Real Estate Agent, we've researched what our potential electric (both in summer and winter), gas/propane, water, trash, and insurance bills will be to make sure that we get something where we can not only afford the mortgage payment but also all of those other household expenses on our BAH. Our cable/satellite, phone, we already know that we usually can make those come out of our base pay at some point. We've researched the market trends here in Thentynine Palms enough to know that people are still trying to get an assload out of houses that they just aren't going to get because they paid far more than they were worth, unless they find a buyer who hasn't done any research. We've researched enough to know that about 30% of the houses on the market are actually in foreclosure or are short-sells, and that they are not getting any offers on most of these, so the banks, etc are pretty much at our mercy. So, we are going to go out there and take full advantage of this buyers market and get the most house we can for our money, and actually, we aren't going to try to get a huge ass house that's going to take an assload of money to heat/cool, etc. We just really want a nice newer house that will allow us to have some fun doing a few upgrades but doesn't NEED a lot of work, raise our kids and entertain on occassion and that we will either be able to retire in if we so choose or to actually be able to get some equity in and sell if we decide that we want to retire somewhere else. God knows where the housing market in 29 Palms will be in 15 years or so, but hopefully if we are smart and careful we will have a house that is still worth something. If not, I guess we will be retiring here, lol.

Stay tuned and I'll definitely let you know how everything goes.