Real Estate

For the first time in either of our lives the husband and I are looking at purchasing a home. With the markets in dire straits, housing values are finally coming down to what they are actually worth, not some inflated version of everyone needs to be rich to afford them. I still think $140,000 is quite a lot of money, however, I'm more willing to pay it than $250,000 for a house. So, the fact that the original owner paid $181,000 for the house doesn't really bother me, either. It wasn't worth that. I think there is a lot of stupidity on the side of homebuyers in the last 10-15 years, and the fact that they bought houses at inflated prices on some baloon ass mortgage, well, their loss is our gain. We are finally in a position to put a good chunk of money down on a house and get a mortgage payment well below our BAH and the fact that by the time the husband retires we will almost have it totally paid off, IF NOT paid off, is not lost on us at all. We still have a lot of work to do if we are even going to make an offer, so we will see how things progress.

Don't get me wrong, living on base is great. I like the safety, I like the fact that when shit breaks, someone comes to fix it and it doesn't cost us money out of our pocket, I love the fact that for the most part we have pretty good neighbors, and I like that Meghan has the opportunity to play with some many kids her own age, and that we are close to things like the commissary and the hospital, etc. However, for all of those pluses, the huge downside is that we are paying $1244 basically in rent that in the end, we won't have anything to show for it. Now, the way the housing market was even just a year ago, we were better off. But with the way the market is falling so drastically, the fact that husband is already selected for the next rank, and the fact that we have this chunk of money we can throw at a house, the benefits for buying start to outweigh the benefits of living on base. I know that many houses still have a great deal farther to fall, but if we are smart, I think we can get a good deal and still be able to sell, if we want to, when husband is ready to retire. This does mean we would make Twentynine Palms our home for the forseeable future. While that may have bothered me at one time, it doesn't bug me at much any longer. Living on the coast until retirement isn't an option, we could be there for three years but then they'd move him, but since most people don't want to stay in the desert for any longer than what they have to, it provides us greater options to go from unit to unit if necessary to stay there. And while I sometimes hate the fact that nothing is close, at the same time, it's not undoable. The heat is a factor, but air conditioning makes it bearable. And hot is all relative. I don't like humidity at all, I hate being wet all day long. 95 or 100 degrees plus humidity is just as awful as 116 with no humidity. There's no snow. Well, snow is all fun and games when you are a kid, but when you are an adult, with snow comes ice, and I've been on my ass due to ice enough for one lifetime, thank you very much. And I lucked out, because at least I didn't twist my ankle or anything really serious. Now, yes, you can find ice in the desert, and at that it's usually black ice, but you have to be really lucky to run across something like that, it's very rare. Watch out for sprinklers, those will get you every time. ;0)

Anyway, we have lots of stuff to think about and consider. And we have some time to do it, I think.