House Hunting

We've been feeling the "pull" to move closer to Caldwell as the months have gone on. Marc has to fill up every week with gas, in a truck that was loaned to us by my parents, and spends at least 5 hours driving to and from work every week. I know that's normal for a lot of people, but most people live farther away from a job because it costs less to live farther away. Ours is the opposite. It costs us more to live in the Boise/Meridian area than it would to live in Caldwell. We started looking at homes to rent out there because our lease ended November 1st and we're now on a month to month contract. We got pretty excited because we were finding homes that were 4 bedrooms, 2000 square feet for $750/month (That's $100 less than what we're paying now). However, rentals are being snatched up really quickly, it's not first come, first serve with some rental property managements. You pay a non-refundable $35 for every application, and are not guaranteed that you will be selected as the tenant. We would face the risk of giving notice on this place, hoping that we'd get one of the rentals without any certainty...or end up paying two rent payments and a down payment in some cases. It was very frustrating, and both of us had uncertain feelings about it.

I came home from my class one night, and Marc casually brought up "what do you think if I told you there was a 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, 2000+ square foot home for $438 a month?" I said, what's wrong with the house? He showed me a house that was in the same neighborhood as one that we were looking to rent in and said that's what our mortgage payment would be if we were to buy it. I was kind of like, ok, yeah, but that's just one house.....he sold me when he showed me 5 more like it. House sales are at an all-time low in Caldwell right now. The criteria we want is averaging $80-90,000!!!

We've been doing a lot of research since then. Our number 1 concern, financing. Oh golly. We have A LOT of debt right now. Not to mention, hardly any money saved for a down payment. We figured the worst they could tell us was no, and at least we'd know where we stand. Both my brothers gave us names of loan officers to start working with to try and get pre-approved.

We were pleasantly surprised to find that we still have excellent credit, which qualified us for the lower rates. We are currently finalizing one write up that includes a grant from Idaho Housing (because of our income). The numbers are looking like if we purchase a $90,000 home, we can come with a 3% down payment and still have a 3.75% interest rate. If we ask the sellers to pay closing costs, we're looking at $3,150 for down payment, and a mortgage payment (including PMI, taxes & insurance) of $601.38. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

That means if we move to Caldwell, we can:
1) give my parents their truck back because Marc can walk/bike/or be driven to work, saving us money on gas and time
2) we can faster progress on our debt because we're not spending so much on rent & can put more towards the debt & our savings account
3) own our home, thus hopefully building equity, (prices seem like they can only go up from here), take the tax credits from the insurance that we're paying

We're excited! Happy House Hunting, right? :)