Finding Contentment

In the market for a home

11:21 AM, Friday, October 26, 2007 .. Posted in Family .. 3 comments .. Link

Finally, I feel like we are getting back to normal. Our lives have been such a roller coaster for the past few months. First, my husband's job loss, than my best friend new baby, than my sister-in-law's new baby (and raising her two babies while she was on life support in the hospital), than helping my best friend move out of state, then helping my brother and sister-in-law paint and refurbish their new house...

I'm almost afraid to say that things are finally getting back to normal. Mark finished his 2-month training period at his new job and is beginning to settle in. Both my best friend and my brother are now settling into their new homes, my sister-in-law is raising her own babies now, and my house is starting to look clean again.

You may remember that we had just started the process of looking for a house in South Carolina to buy when Mark lost his job. Well, since he found a new job, we had to re-approved for our home loan. But our loan officer tells us because of the job issue, we have to find a home in the area and not in South Carolina where Mark would eventually have to look for yet another job. It's less than two hours away, but he would only be able to commute for so long.

We are a little relieved. Although that means giving up our dream of moving to the country for the time being, we feel that this is God's will. He has made it clear by shutting several doors that we are not to move out of the area at this time. So this week we met with a real estate agent and are looking for a home in our area. The real estate agent said finding a home for us may not be easy, as we are very specific about what we want. We are also trying to hard to find a home for much under what our loan was approved for. We don't see how we would make the payments on the amount we were actually approved for, and we don't want to set ourselves up for foreclosure.

We are looking for a 4-bedroom home so that all the kids can have their own room. It can't be in a subdivision and it has to have enough room for our chicken coop and our large gardens. It also needs to have a decent size kitchen, as this is the heart of our home. And last but not least, it can't be more than 45 minutes from Mark's place of work. We realize that we won't be able to find a home like this is a very nice neighborhood, but we don't want a bad neighborhood, either. So we are expecting a neighborhood full or kids or elderly people, but one without crime.

We have an apointment Sunday to look at three homes. The first is just a few blocks from where we have been renting a home for the last seven years. We have looked at the outside, which looks okay. But we believe the rooms may be quite small. We'll have to see. (These photos are all courtesy of realtor.com)

The next one is in a subdivision, which was actually not we were wanting, but this is different. There is no homeowners association that we would have to pay to tell us what to do, the houses are all different and not cookie-cutter homes, and the lots are very large. The things we don't like about this house so far is that most of the floors are ceramic tile. That means that the kids (or the parents) could drop something heavy and break the floor tiles...

And the last one is a huge house, but has practically no back yard, so we're not sure about it. It is also being sold "as is" which throws up a red flag. It was built in 1966 and I doubt if it has had very many updates since then. But is does have a lot of things the other houses don't have, like a 2-car garage, a den and a breakfast room.

Of course, all these opinions could change once we see the inside of the homes. As you can see, all the homes have a lot of trees, which we really like. By the way, our area is one of the very few in the nation that hasn't been affected by the current housing market. Our area is growing rapidly and the market is still going strong. And luckily, the cost of living isn't very high here.