Yep. My girl and I were approved for the loan and just got back from an outing visiting seven houses. Got that list down to three really really likes and two loves.

#1
#2
#3

The two loves have identical layouts as a friend's house down about a block away. So that's a little weird but whatev.
We are going to visit a new list of houses later next week.


EDIT:

Bought a house.

wow... not only are they all spacious as hell but they're CHEAP! oh my god cheap ... like choke on my breakfast cheap! is it a dip in the market because of the whole credit climate or is it always like that?

From the visual aspect, I'd go with 1 or 3. However, dude, please look inside the house before purchasing. Best of luck to you.

damn! cheap is right. you cant get a damn thing in toronto for under 300k, and you need to blow a half mil or so to get something thats got half decent privacy and land. i could like drop a sack of cash in front of the relater and not need a morgage with a house like that!

Yeah they are hella cheap. That's why we are moving to buy now. It is gonna cost us 2500 to break the lease we are in now but it will be worth it as the mortgage will be 250 less a month than rent.

Also we have a new favorite.

@bonanza - .... .what do you think 'visiting seven houses' means? they just walk around the outside? lol!

you're new favourite doesn't have any grass... i mean the front yard looks nice and stuff but... there's no grass at the back either =S do you not like grass?

I'd love to get a place of my own... but I don't really see it happening. I mean, renting forever would suck, but what else can you do?

Well... besides what you are doing, lol.

@Sumi- Yeah it has no grass, but in AZ grass more than triples the water bill, which is higher in AZ than most places as we are a desert with ONE river of any significance for the whole state. Add in the fact that we are in our eighth consecutive year of official drought status, and most people don't have grass or much to speak of. If we get that house, we would like to make the majority of the back yard grass.

The hard part is coming up with an extra $2281 to break the lease we are currently in, but my mother already promised to cover half of that, and we have more family to turn to as well. We don't want to use all our savings at once to move as we may need it for numerous things that may come up.

right - desert, that makes sense. i'm used to living in a place where you never water the grass it just grows because that's what grass does.
i understand your savings thing. moving = money >_< i had savings until i moved and then they all dissapeared =(

I have a similar problem. Here in Maine, we are like tourist central, and because, oh hey, the ocean is nearby, and that is special for some reason (seriously, if you live on one of the great lakes, its the same effect) all the prices have stayed "high" My fiance and me when to see several houses for $100,000-$130,000 and they were all foreclosed, winterized (means they shut every thing off and stuff all the pipes with some sort of crap) and in almost all cases in serious need of extensive repair. All of them turned out to be "short sales" which means that they were being sold for drastically under what the property value is. This sounds good on paper if you consider that the value of the house would jump $30,000 ish just by you purchasing it, but then you hit a little snag where the bank won't give you a loan to make a down payment until the house is "habitable" (It must have running water a stove and a fridge, most short sales lack these things.) but to make it habitable, you would need to make $8,000-$17,000 worth of repairs, which you really can't legally do unless you actually own the house, which wouldn't be a problem if you could get that frigging loan!
The subtext here is that the banks REALLY want you to have is $80,000 in cash, on the spot to buy the house out right so they just can get more money in the short term.

Yeah. Great if you are a retiree looking for a project to putter on while you spend your twilight years on the coast and eat seafood every day, but if you are a young couple just starting out? Well screw you!

well I just put an offer on a four bedroom two story home. Its gorgeous. It went on the market yesterday and I put my offer in today so hopefully they will accept.

I wish you the best of luck with that. I'm sure this is both very exciting and scary at the same time...

Bought a house.
This one

The above mentioned 4 bedroom sold before we could counter offer. But that's fine because this one was our second favorite of all the many we looked at.

Pretty exciting. I move in mid June.

cool and it even has dirt in the back ^__^
congratulations!

This is a really big step for you, I'm glad you are happy with it. And congrats on being probably one of the only real home owners here at the Mag.

Just got the keys today. Few days early. Just got all new locks and I just left there after bug bombing. The bombing is just in case. There's no bugs there but I don't want to find some later and have all my stuff there and have to deal with it as a big mess.

I bet you are really ready to get the move over with and get settled in...

Yeah. We have been packed and ready for like ten days. Just made a trip to Lowe's and Walmart and got some yard stuff including a lawn mower and stuff. This weekend we are gonna go back to Lowe's and get a new back door. We also might go to the target I work at this afternoon. There's a nice gazebo for half off, plus my discount, I wanna pick up.

Its amazing how all the little things you don't need in an apt, but do need in a house, add up.

I can imagine. Lawn mowers are pretty pricy just by themselves (needed just in case the zombies manage to get past all your plants). Twice I've rented a house instead of an appartment, and there was a good deal of other stuff to take care of too. I bet that's compounded a good deal when you actually OWN one. So good luck and have fun getting all settled in.

And btw, don't think I haven't noticed that in your sig... ¬_¬