House Hunting

I owe our fabulous European vacation a blog post of its own, because it was one of the best trips I have ever been on and we did and saw so much. I don't have the time right now to do that blog post justice though, so I'll leave you with a few pictures from the trip instead.



We decided right before the trip that we wanted to buy a house this summer instead of renewing our apartment lease or moving to another apartment complex. We had many conversations about it and came to the decision that now is a great time to buy with prices and mortgage rates so low, and we know we want to stay in the Atlanta area for the foreseeable future, so why not move out of this sub par apartment complex with its falling down walls, messy hallway painting jobs and questionable residents?

Within a week of getting back from our trip we started the house hunting process. It started out pretty exciting and fun- looking through pages and pages of homes online, deciding which area we wanted to live in, and imagining all of the extra space we would have compared to our current apartment. But I have to say, the process has become increasingly less exciting and fun. I think Rob and I would both call it stressful and time consuming at this point...and it has only been 2 weeks.

We have seen about 15 homes so far. Out of those 15 we have been grossed out by one to the point of not wanting to go upstairs, pulled up to and turned around without exiting the car of another because of the neighboring homes and area, seriously considered 4 of them, fell in love with 2-3 of them, were about to put an offer on one of them until we found out the elementary school was no good, and put an offer on one of them. Everyone tells you not to fall in love with a house before it is officially your home, because there are many obstacles along the way that will prevent you from getting the home, but that is easier said than done. I am a pretty emotional person I would say, at least when it comes to certain things, and so it is no surprise to Rob that I am not handling this house hunting business as well as he is. I have probably shed tears over homes 2 times over the past 2 weeks. Once was over a house that we did not even go inside of, only saw online, a house that we talked up in our minds so much for a week only to find out the day before we were going to go see it that the bank was asking for best and final offers already.

One of our biggest frustrations is that our realtor was not kidding when she said inventory is low. Sure you can find plenty of homes online in the surrounding Atlanta area to buy, but not within our budget, our preferred location and with good schools. I know you must compromise on some things, but those 3 are very hard to compromise on. We would much rather compromise on the inside of the home, maybe a house that needs new floors or updated kitchen counters, than buy a home with bad schools or is further outside the city. When we do a search it literally feels like 75% of the homes we would be interested in or want to go see are sale pending.

So for now we will just keep on keeping on, remember what everyone keeps telling us- what is meant to be will be, the right house for you will come along, and hope for the best! Hopefully my next post is sooner than later and has some positive news to share.