Tuesday, March 2, 2010

New Condo

Chris and I have been in search of a new home for the past few months. Until now we had really been looking too early, but planners as both of us are, we wanted to get a good idea of what kind of place, and what price range we would be looking for. We had a few main criteria for this new place:

  • It should be a condo. We decided that we were too young and had too much other stuff going on to have to deal with being responsible for the upkeep and repair of a whole house, and that we were planning on staying in the same place long enough that an apartment wouldn't be cheaper.
  • 2 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. We wanted to be able to have a guest bedroom/office. And let's face it, the 2 of us have quite a lot of crap to fit into one place.
  • It should have a much shorter commute for Chris. Currently it is taking him a while to get to and from work. About 25 miles each way.
  • It should be close enough to a city (either Towson or Baltimore) that would have enough opportunities for me to find a job once I'm actually looking for one.
  • It had to be under $200,000 otherwise we couldn't afford the mortgage payments.
  • It had to be in a safe location, or else my mother would flip out.
  • We would prefer it to be on the first floor so it might be easier to have a dog, when that time comes.
  • We would prefer if the patio faced the back of the building into the woods, as opposed to the front of the building overlooking the parking lot.
  • We were also hoping to find something renovated, some of the older ones were quite sketchy.
So after quite a while of looking for places online, getting e-mail updates from our realtor, and doing a lot of math about our financial outlook, we finally found a place. Or may I say, Chris found a place. I haven't actually seen it, but it was the best one we had seen, it had an extra room a den of sorts, new granite counter tops, nicely renovated, 2 miles from Chris' office, 10 miles from Baltimore, first floor, facing the woods, in a nice building that locks, in a complex that we couldn't afford. It was seriously under-priced because the seller was foreclosing, so I told him to jump on it, and I'd see it afterward.

Apparently when you're dealing with a short sale like this, the bank that owns the seller's mortgage has to approve the price that we buy it at because they have to agree that it is enough to absolve the seller of his or her entire debt. So we put an offer and a deposit down. The seller accepted our offer, but we still have to wait on the bank. Supposively Bank of America takes their sweet ass time with these kinds of things, and the last one our realtor has done took the bank 10 months to close. We kind of need to close in 2 months to be sure that we get the first time home buyer's tax credit. So Chris is telling me not to get my hopes up, and that if it takes too long, we may have to get something else. But I'm still excited that we are one step closer to having a home together!

Julibean <3

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