Learning about the home-buying process....

I'm glad we've shopped around for a house without having the money to buy for SOOOOO many months now. I feel like (and excuse my arrogance) an expert on the real estate in this area. LOL! Every day for months now I have looked, compared, contrasted, and broken down every possible property in every possible area we might want to live in. I have compared schools, compared zip codes, compare price per square footage, sized up every single neighborhood and street and location. I can look at a map of every street within a 15 mile radius of here and visualize the neighborhood. I have driven hundreds of miles looking at house after house after house, getting so excited about ones that could possibly be ours. Imagining what we could do with them. Contemplating what kind of money we would need to fix them up. It's become an obsession, but a fun one. We've crunched the numbers and I know just how much more we need to bring in so that we can get into a house and live comfortable on one income.
And do you know what I've decided after all this shopping in this price range? We need to change our price range. Yes, folks, I believe it is actually a GREAT thing that I have been shopping somewhat aimlessly all these months. Because it took me this long to realize we need to up our price point 10,000- $40000. And that it wouldn't make THAT much difference on our mortgage payments. And that it made NO since to buy a home on basically one income when we would have 2 incomes 5 months later. It took me all these months of skipping over countless houses because they weren't up to our standards to actually crunch the numbers on more expensive houses. To come up with a Plan B.
It's a pretty startling revelation for someone who is so organized and always likes to feel like I'm on top of everything. Turns out, I was on top of everything. I knew what we wanted. I knew what needed to done. I knew what bills we needed to nix and what income we needed. I know what we want as a down payment and how we want to handle closing costs. I was just leaving out one important part of the whole "Chasing Our American Dream"-and that was making sure we actually GOT our American Dream.
And all this time we've been searching and searching so that we can settle. Why would we want to settle? So that we can leave a great house, in a great neighborhood, with almost everything we'd ever ask for? A house that we're paying NOTHING for? Nah, I don't think so. We'll up the price point, thank you.
I'm sorry if this is the most boring thing you've ever read, but it was a significant discovery for me and I'm in a bloggity-blogging mood tonight.
That's all for tonight. We're still chasing our dream. But we're learning it's defintely more of a steady up and down hil jog as opposed to a sprint.
God Bless!
Melissa