Do the House Hustle

[hkellick]

So... out of the blue one day, K's parents give us a call.

They say, in essence, Look J [K's brother] and J [his girlfriend] are buying a house together. We've decided to offer to help them by offering them $8,000 (the precise amount of Obama's Tax Credit, if we buy by November 30) and they'll pay us back when the tax credit comes. We've decided to offer the same help to you and H so you can find a place big enough for you and the new family.

...

Needless to say, it took us a few minutes to accept that.. yes, that did in fact REALLY just happen. K's wanted a house for YEARS and I can't deny that we need more space than we have in this dinky two bedroom apartment.

So.. we stopped by our real estate agent's (our good friend Lynne (chite)) house yesterday to oo and ahh over her new baby girl, Lillian, and to talk shop. Needless to say, we're in.

We want to stay in Fairfax County. We like the general area of Fairfax/Vienna/Oakton since it's close to K's church and Arthur Murray and it's not too much farther to work.

K needs to make a call tomorrow, to see how much money the bank's willing to lend us and she's already signed up for a site that shows local homes on the market and then, I guess, we're off. Like a rocket.

This is Insanity. It really is. To try to shuffle about and move NOW while we're dealing with the pregnancy thing. And it's really going to stretch the budget, especially as we closed our credit cards (we went to credit counseling and agreed to let them take care of our credit card debt for us because frankly, we had too much on our cards and kept adding more. :p)

But.. a house will be nice. Real nice. It'll offer us room, it'll be an investment in the future. It'll give us the ABILITY to actually be able to make changes to the decor such as paint or new rugs or new shelving units, etc.

So...
That's where we stand now.
On the brink of insanity.

Comments

[reginagiraffe]

You may have just fubared your credit by closing your credit cards. (Did you actually close the accounts or just cut them up so you can't use them?) Your 'available credit to debt' ratio (which is one of the major things banks look at) has now suddenly become much worse. :/

[aquinasprime]

I'm not saying don't get a house but I want to point out one thing that happened to us. Prior to buying the house we payed our credit cards off completely each month, and did so very easily. Once we bought the house (with a mortgage payment about $100 more than our rent cost) we have not been able to do so. Just make sure you budget for everything (including estimated utility costs, the cost of things like paint, new appliances (if you need them), etc) before you make the move.

[phoenixsong]

They're not quite closed; they're under a "debt management plan". We can't use them without getting kicked out of the plan (unless we call first for an emergency situation), but the accounts are still being paid off -- under more reasonable payments and interest rates.

[reginagiraffe]

*nod*

I have no idea how the bank would treat that then.

[chite]

Hope the call went well. Give me a shout out when you have info from James. :)