Wednesday, October 26, 2011

The inner thoughts of a potential first-time homebuyer



Right now it's so hard to think about anything other than buying the house. We've laughed about how ahead of ourselves we are - last night we were talking about paint colors, landscaping, and how our furniture will fit there. We laugh because we still have no idea if we'll even qualify for a loan. Even more ridiculous, two weeks ago we weren't even thinking of buying a house, we saw this one, loved it, and decided to make an offer. Is that normal?

It's hard not to think about all the reasons we may not get loan approval. It's frustrating to add up all our student loan debt and know that it may hold us back this time. Our debt to income ratio isn't exactly spectacular, but we pay our bills on time and are chipping away at our debt. That's all we can do, but it's all I can think about.

I think it's really hard not to be discouraged. We just have so many questions. We want to know what our options are. We'd like to talk to a person about a loan, not just put our information into a computer. We want to set up a meeting with the bank, but they open at 8 a.m. and close at 4 p.m. How do they expect working people to ever meet with anyone at the bank? Ugh. I'll stop ranting now.

Have any of you bought a house? Do you have any advice or home-buying tips for us? Are we crazy?

Photo via online listing of our potential home.

4 comments:

Andy said...

Is this a picture of the actual house you are looking at? It looks kinda familiar....is it over by where I used to live?

Unknown said...

Yep, that's the house. It's just off KK. You were down Nichols, right?

Ashley Hall said...

I have one home buying tip/question. I've also started the process of looking into houses and didn't realize that taxes and insurance are a monthly cost on top of the monthly mortgage. I was pretty shocked, because it can add 200-500 dollars per month! Eek!

Unknown said...

Ashley, I think that's a pretty high amount. Insurance is probably $500-$600/year and taxes vary, but for the house we're looking at, they would be $1,158/year. That's only about $150 more/month. But yes, that's on top of your mortgage payment.