As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Molly and I have officially become house hunters. I use the word officially because she's been chomping at the bit for about six months now. When she isn't looking at Pinterest for wedding ideas, she's on 15 different realty sites trying to find houses. In fact, I would even say that she has spent more time looking at houses than she has looking at wedding stuff. She's a lunatic (just kidding, baby!). Because we really didn't know where to start, we scheduled a meeting back in September or October with a financial planner who comes and talks with the vets at our school. Dominic advised us on some helpful tips for saving money and making sure that our credit was as high as it possibly could be before we really got serious in the buying process. Since then, we've been squirreling away money and closing out old accounts that were just collecting dust. We started checking out the occasional open house and zeroing in on what burbs we might want to consider home.
The hardest part of the whole process for me (I won't speak for Molly, but I'm guessing she would concur) is matching expectations with reality. For very good reasons including family and job location, Molly would like to stay in the greater southwest Minneapolis suburban areas, including Richfield, Bloomington, Edina, Eden Prairie, etc. Unfortunately, houses in that area are either ridiculously expensive, 100 years old, or both. Growing up in South Dakota, $200,000 could usually buy you the biggest house in any town. Living in Edina, $200,000 can buy you the size equivalent of a studio apartment with 80 year old carpet and wood paneling. I hate wood paneling. I know that the northern suburbs provide so much more house for the money, but I also know how important it is for us to be closer to where we are now. For instance, if we lived in Coon Rapids and Molly had to make the same drive I do everyday but in the opposite direction, it would take her at least twice as long as it takes me because of the flow (or complete lack thereof) of traffic. While more house is enticing, seeing an hour less of Molly every day isn't.
So, we settled on a geographic location and decided to work with an old neighbor of Molly's as our real estate agent. We met with him on Monday after we met again with our finance expert and had some real numbers in our head for what is possible. Steve, our agent, was super nice and super excited to help us out (as he should be since we're paying a part (albeit a very small part) of his salary). He's been sending us out every new house that hits the market, and tonight we lose our home shopping virginity because we're officially touring three houses in Bloomington as real deal home buyers. We also started shopping around with another mortgage lender, and I think we might be able to handle a little more than what we initially were told (don't worry, I've run the numbers about 1,000 times to make sure we're not going to end up spray painting "THEY TOOK OUR HOUSE" on the garage door after we get foreclosed on). That would be HUGE because the difference that $10,000 extra makes on the type of place we make our first home is remarkable.
One thing I get a little bit nervous about is that besides being on real estate sites all the time, Molly rarely doesn't have our TV turned to HGTV. I've seen enough Property Virgins, Property Brothers, Kitchen Crashers, and every other stupid show that I'm starting to think that I might be capable of doing work myself and improving the value of our home over coming years. We see houses in our price range and I say things like, "Oh, we could totally redo that kitchen for $2,000 and add $10,000 in equity to our home," or "Wood paneling is so easy to tear down and replace with sheet rock!" I have to shake this mindset because I am incredibly deficient in all areas of handiness. I have the brain for it, but my manual dexterity is lacking considerably.
Anyway, house shopping has now become the official past time of the Pool/Szarzynski household.
(Completely unrelated side note that I thought of as I was typing that out...I CANNOT wait until I can type Molly Pool. Having grown up with one of the shortest possible name combinations that features a first, middle, and last name with less than four letters each and that all feature double letters (Jeff Lee Pool), the consonant laden, end of the alphabet mess that is Molly's last name presents a challenge every time I have to write it or type it. Five more months...okay, end of tangent).
I'll try to keep updating everyone on how the process is going, and maybe even post some pictures of places we like and of all the wood paneling we see. Heck, I might even start a spin-off blog called Wood Paneling in The Upper Midwest with Jeff "The Handyman" Pool and feature the best of the worst that we encounter. Wish us luck!
Jeff
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