Buying a House

I'm entering a new stage in my life. It has finally become time for me to establish roots and start building wealth. It's time for me to buy a house (or at least to become house-poor)!

I started out being very excited. I had been anticipating the large purchase for quite some time and when September rolled around I was falling over myself to get out and inspect some houses. I spent a day or two looking at listings and came up with a handful of houses I wanted to look at more thoroughly. The very first day of looking at actual houses I came across a real gem. This house had everything I wanted, nothing I didn't want and some things I didn't even know that I wanted.

The list of things I wanted in my future house was a garage, a basement, at least two bedrooms, central HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) and a flat backyard for my future horseshoe pit. The garage was easy enough to find, but when I looked at other places I realized that there are some major differences in the garages in my price range. Some of them were detached, which I did not like. Some of them had weird doors which are not capable of having a garage door opener. Some others needed work. The garage in my gem house is attached, with a new door and opener.

The basements were about as varied as the garages. There are basically 3 different styles of basement I looked at (not including crawlspaces); stone, block and concrete. Stone basements make you feel like you're in a really old building (or dungeon) and they usually have a dirt floor - not an option. Block basements offer a little more structure and open space, but fall short of concrete when it comes to waterproofing. Concrete basements are made completely from poured concrete, and are obviously preferable. Gem house has full concrete basement.

The bedrooms aspect of my house hunt wasn't as important as the other qualifications, and it wasn't a problem to find houses that met my requirements. I didn't even look at any houses with less than 2 bedrooms. Also, I only looked at houses that had central HVAC.

Backyards were another story. They were as wide and varied as garages and basements put together. No two backyards were the same, and very few of them were similar at all. Some of the backyards I looked at included features such as a chicken coop, fire barrels, junk piles, rotten decks and questionable outbuildings. Many of the backyards were either not big enough for a horseshoe pit or had such a dramatic slope that building a pit was not feasible (both deal-breakers). My gem house has a vastly expansive backyard that is mostly level and includes an old concrete walkway of questionable origin, but of value to a future athletic field (horseshoe pit).

The more I looked at houses, the more I became singular of purpose. I had to have my gem house. My decision had been made. That's when things got complicated - which will be the subject of an upcoming post...