For most of my adult life, I have rented the residence in which I abide. The only exceptions to this are the time I briefly owned a mobile home in Tallahassee and when I was in the military and resided in the dorms. Beyond that, I’ve always rented my place of residence.
From time to time, I have looked into purchasing though. In 1992, the girl I was going out with at the time was getting PCS and owned a townhome. She was going to sell it for $29,900 and offered me a shot at it. Her place was nice, though I didn’t like that it didn’t have an air conditioner. Still, with no money down, combined with insurance and taxes factored into the mortgage, it was going to be about $350 a month to live there. At the time, I was making $8.99/hour and my rent was $285/month. Now, on the surface it may seem that $65/month isn’t much, but at the time, paying that extra amount would have put me into the red as my required expenditures would have exceeded my income. So I passed.
About three years later, I again looked into buying a place. I had gotten a new job where I earned more money and I got a second job at B. Dalton Booksellers to earn some extra cash. However, I wasn’t impressed with what was being shown to me for what I could afford. Plus, I had gotten myself into a ton of credit card debt (more than I could afford), so it behooved me to get rid of that first, which was going to take a few years. Once I got out of debt, I again started looking, but then I switched jobs to make more money, but I decided to hold off on buying a home. Good thing I did because the department I worked in at WorldCom got outsourced to EDS. Since I was a contractor, EDS told me, “we aren’t taking contractors, only WorldCom employees.”
My next job took me to Denver and a year later I moved up there. By the time I was working at WorldCom again in Denver, I was making a lot of money and had approval from my boss to move back to Colorado Springs. I would work from home or from the Colorado Springs office and would have to come to Denver from time-to-time. I decided to go the new home route, signed the papers, paid down some money, and all that was left was to sign the papers and pay down 5%. Two days before I was to sign the papers, my boss called me into his office to basically let me know that the department would not exist in two days (a Friday), with the work being given to developers. That meant no job and with no job, I didn’t see how I could move back to Colorado Springs when the jobs I wanted were in the Denver area.
That leads me to now. It was only recently that I got completely out of debt again after having all those medical bills. With housing prices coming down as well as the interest rates, now feels like the perfect time to finally get back into the market. So yesterday, I called the bank and got pre-qualified for a loan. Yay! Now, I have to find a Realtor and start looking around. I’m excited by this, but also nervous. After all, it is possible that in six months, I could be unemployed. Still, I say I am a Christian and if that’s true, then I have to believe that whatever happens (whether I keep a job or not) is in God’s hands, to include whether I buy a house or not.
I figured it would be interesting to document my house-hunting adventures, no matter where it lead.
Good luck to you. I remember buying my first place. It was a condo that I got when housing prices were low. For years my payments were nothing. Then I got married and we got a new place. We had kids and we got a bigger place. I miss those cheap mortgage payments. lol
How difficult is it these days to find a solid way to make a living, to live a decent or adequate life with basic necessities met, and to have a permament place really called home… But, I’d request, first of all, God please end the national unemployment crisis.
Well, best of luck.
Thanks to both of you. ^_^
And here Mary and I are talking about selling the house in St. Louis sometime in the next few years and getting a condo. 🙂
JSM
Likely I’ll be getting a condo or townhome.