New House

My husband and I found a new house this week. It has been a very exciting process. This will be the third house we have bough in four years time. With each transaction we seem to learn more about the entire process. With the most recent transaction I think we are looking to be able to earn some sweat equity in the house. We needed to consider moving to a larger place because of our expanding family and also interest rates seem primed to climb. We had been casually looking for the last few months and since the election we have been more serious because I thought rates would be going up more with the certainty of Bush being reelected. Apparently there is usually a dip in consumer spending when an incumbent is unseated because times are uncertain.

Anyway we had three criteria I think with our new house:

1. Good Bones - we had to like the actual structure and layout of the house.
2. Good family friendly neighborhood.
3. Good School system. Our daughter Lucy is only 10 months but this is supposed to be our ten year house.

I think we filled the criteria. We are planning to do a little bit of remodeling before we move in. I can't wait to start that whole process. I have my spread sheet set up with my wishlist and my budget already.

We got a good deal on the house by not being in a hurry to buy and being able to take a risk in our bargaining (i.e. we did not need to buy a house and we were not emotionally attached to the property). I suggest this tactic to anyone looking for a good deal.

I am finding more and more the lower you start the lower your end price is. We ended up getting the house for almost 10% less than it initially listed for. We also found sellers who needed a sale and had been on the market for a long time (seven months). They had not done some of the fluffing work we are about to do on the house (new carpets, new window coverings, new paint in the spring). I think they did themselves a disservice by not doing these things before they listed. For a very small amount of money outlaid they could have raised their asking price by quite a bit. Then again it was a rental for them. So maybe mentally they were already out of the deal and didn't care.

I will post more about our remodel I am sure.