The Process of Buying a House
The process of applying for a mortgage, working with a bank and Realtor, closing escrow, and everything in between required lots of patience. There were many steps in this process, some that made sense to us and some that didn't seem to make any sense at all. Apparently, to sign off on a mortgage application, mortgage underwriters operate under a great deal of scrutiny ever since the whole financial crisis and consequently they asked us for documentation of lots of things. Some things were very trivial - in our opinion anyways - and we felt like having a good credit score or enough money in savings would have been good enough to not need to explain so many things about our finances. This was not the case though. Of course we had to provide bank statements and all that stuff, but some of the bizarre things they asked for were a letter from the in-laws explaining why we weren't paying rent while living with them and a letter from Teach For America explaining a (small) 'Transitional Grant' that we had been given when we joined TFA to help us move to our new job location back when we first moved to the D.C. area. We saw these things as trivial when looked at in the grand scheme of things, but we really had no choice but to role with the punches. At times, we thought they must have suspected we were drug dealers or something because of the level of scrutiny with which they were seemingly examining every last tiny aspect of our finances. I can't imagine what hoops people have to jump through these days when they are doing less ordinary things in housing like refinancing, getting a second home, or anything else.
There were times of frustration and head-scratching, but overall it really wasn't that bad, and we would recommend the banking institution we chose. All the hoops and regulations aren't the bank or the bankers' fault. The lady working with us on behalf of the bank/lender was very helpful and nice. Also, our Realtor was fantastic. She was our next door neighbor while we were living with the in-laws and I would recommend her without reservation. She drove us to a lot of houses and was very patient when we wanted to see some houses multiple times. If anyone needs a Realtor in Idaho let me know :) From beginning to end, every person we worked with (our Realtor, bankers, home mortgage folks, escrow people) explained everything to us and made us feel like a valued client.
Being Patient...
From the time we made the offer on our house to when we moved in, it was about two months. This was mostly due to us needing to take care of some financial loose ends with my old job and getting all set up and situated financially with my new job. I think the entire process could have been done in just a matter of weeks if you didn't have anything you needed to take care of like we did. Luckily, the owners of the house we bought allowed us to set the timetable for everything.
One of the things that has taken the longest though even after moving in was getting furniture. Even after finding and purchasing the furniture we wanted, which was and is still an ordeal in and of itself, we usually had to wait at least a week or two or sometimes three for it to be delivered. We are a little ways out from most of the larger furniture stores in Boise so they weren't able to make delivery trips right away and we didn't want to try and move the furniture ourselves. This gave us lots of time to envision how we would set things up though when it all started arriving. Although we wanted everything all at once, it was actually easier to set things up and decorate the house one room or piece of furniture at a time.
Painting
Since we had to wait a while for our first load of furniture to arrive at our house, this gave us the opportunity to do some good old fashioned painting. We (and by 'we' I really mean Michelle, and mostly our in-laws) painted all of the rooms and bathrooms in the house. This took a lot of effort, was sort of fun at first but that faded kind of quickly, and was surprisingly expensive. We would not have been able to do it alone though, and it was 110% worth the effort! When we finally get some pictures up here of our house we will show what colors the rooms used to be and how they look now. My father-in-law used to be a professional painter so that made things go a lot quicker and smoother.
Lots of Little Things
The simple fact of having your own place is awesome for all the obvious reasons, but on top of that what makes owning a home so sweet is really a lot of little things. For example, having a master bathroom that you can get to without having to walk outside of your room. Another thing is having a walk-in closet where Michelle and I can both hang up all our clothes (no more using closets in miscellaneous places throughout the apartment for clothes and other things). On that note, it's a wonderful thing to not have to put things in places they shouldn't have to go due to not having enough room elsewhere; the best example of this would be the fact that in Alexandria we kept all of my bikes and bike stuff (which was a lot of stuff) in our spare bedroom, which happened to be Mason's room, and at the same time served as an overall storage space with industrial metal shelving and a large wardrobe for extra clothes. No more of that though!
Other things a lot of people have and maybe take for granted that we finally have now: a backyard for kids to run around in and play in; a garage for stuff that should be kept in a garage and not in a bedroom closet; never having to scrape ice or snow off windshields because, again, we have a garage; not having to carry trash bags a couple of blocks away to the community dumpster (Eaton Square friends, you know exactly what I'm talking about) and instead having both a trash bin and a recycling bin that gets picked up right in front of your house every Monday; having a laundry room and a washer and dryer that works and cleans well and holds more than a couple of towels and a tee shirt; finally, I have to say how great it is to have way more shelving and storage space throughout the house (closets with built in shelves in every room, a pantry, a walk-in master closet, a three car garage, a laundry room with shelving, more closets in all the right places, book shelves, and even more shelves and drawers on our bed, dresser, and the list goes on...) than we can use or even imagine using right now. We have been told that we will accumulate 'stuff' rapidly and grow into it though These may not be the first things you would think of as the perks of owning a home but after years and years of renting a variety of different apartments, these are things that we really love.
We will be sharing lots of pictures of our new house once we get things set up just right, which will hopefully be
soon! When you really want everything just right though (and even I am trying to make sure everything 'works' right with the other colors and everything else in the room) it takes some time.
