This is an exciting time to be purchasing a home with the tax credit and especially because it’s a buyer’s market. I am actually making the plunge to purchase a  home with my boyfriend, and I couldn’t be happier.

When I went to look for a house I had several things in mind that I wanted, and there were several things that Steve really wanted.

1. Basement – mostly for a “man space” for Steve, but really just a room we could entertain. We both love to shoot pool, and we really wanted somewhere we could put a pool table and mini bar and things.
2. I always wanted a formal dining room. I absolutely love to entertain and have always looked forward to saying, “Let’s have Thanksgiving at mine this year.”
3. A decent sized yard for the dogs. We will be taking the reins of Elway, my mom’s german shepherd, and we want to get him a buddy. So we needed a yard large enough.
4. Either a master bathroom or a way we could invest in putting one in.
5. A walk in closet for the master bedroom, or a way to make one or put in closet space.
6. A place to put a study, mainly for school but also for my website designing business. I need a place where I can go and just focus on that without being disturbed by other jobs that may need finished around the house.
7. A kitchen with enough counter space and storage.
8. “Harry Potter” door and area to be fun for future kids and introducing them to reading.

The other big issue was location. I am going to school in an area where I will most likely find a job, so we couldn’t move to far away. The local houses near that area are “cheaper,” however the school system was not where I wanted to be whether it was where I’d have kids or if we wanted to resell.

So we started looking in a small town versus downtown. It’s a 30 minute commute to school (and potential future job), and it has a great school system. Steve actually commutes 40 minutes to his current job from where we were. If we lived in this town, his commute would be cut in half. It’s only 10 minutes from his family and brothers.

When we started looking at houses there though, I realized how much I LOVE old houses. All the houses we looked at were built earlier than 1900, and they were beautiful. The first was a huge fixer upper, and we just weren’t sure we wanted to take that on. From the 6 inches of feces that had built up in the attic (yeah, we were so glad the owner had taken down the attic door, so we could see that!) and the termite damage, we just decided against it. However, it did make any future houses we looked at seem amazing!

The next house house in perfect condition, but it was being foreclosed on and we didn’t get it. Then came along this beautiful historic home built around 1853 one street over that just knocked me down. It had four bedrooms, formal dining room, detached garage with a room and bathroom in it, new cabinets in the kitchen, and fairly minimal work. All of the major things listed above and even the “minor” things we wanted like a sun room, room to grow, etc. was included!

So now here we are, and I’m so excited. I actually know the owners, and we opted for owner financing to get the house because with the banks being so uptight about giving out loans (understandably) we wouldn’t get a formal loan through a bank. This house is actually quite a bit more than we were planning on spending, but this house avoids the whole “starter home” and then moving into a bigger home because it includes all the things we want or the room to make it happen.

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