We Are Now Officially Homeowners!!! (Plus the Two Things We Learned in Buying a Home)

     I would say that this is our first home, but since it technically is not (we have been renting for the last year and a half), I will call it our first house, er... condo...  That said, Lance and I are now officially homeowners, and boy are we excited about it!!  This whole house finding and house buying process has definitely been an adventure, but we sure have learned a lot.  We are very excited to call this new place our home, and very excited for the memories that will be made here.  We will both miss our church ward, and the people in our neighborhood, but it has come time for us to begin our next chapter. With that, I want to share a couple things I learned from this experience.

 1.) Know Your Budget Ahead of Time
     My husband and I were pre-approved for way more than we were actually comfortable paying month to month.  We knew we didn't want to spend as much as we were approved for right of the bat, but even then, we dropped our budget two or three time before finally finding the home we were looking for.  We found that we had much better luck once we knew exactly where we wanted our monthly payment to be, instead of falling in love with a home just to find out that we didn't want to commit to that monthly amount. Once we sat down and really decided where we wanted our monthly payment, and what that meant as far as overall price, it made it very easy for us to find our new home. We only looked at homes within our budget, and once we found the one we loved, it was a fairly easy process from there.  Pretty exciting if you ask me!!

 2.) Go With An Agent
     With the many different sites, and pages, and all these other things, initially my husband and I had wanted to avoid the help of a real estate agent.  We found a couple of homes that we liked a lot in the beginning, and so at that point we would do as the site directed and we contacted the agent.  One thing that we learned very quickly, is that we did not want to use the same agent as the seller, so we decided to go with a buyer's agent after all.  We were a little discouraged at first, as the first couple of agents we worked with just didn't work out.  Once we found an agent though, we were golden.  (Shout out to Brook Haslam for being so awesome!!) We found multiple houses that we loved; she was able to show us houses that we hadn't ever seen before in the many places we had been looking, and we found our new home in no time.  In my own opinion, it was definitely worth taking the time driving around with the agent looking at different homes.  Especially once we found an agent who knew what we were looking for, and showed us each home on paper before driving us somewhere we already knew we didn't want to go.  

      I don't have a whole lot more to share about what we learned, but this experience was a good one. I am proud to now be a homeowner, and both a little excited and a little nervous for this next chapter in our lives, but I am grateful that I have a wonderful husband that I know will be with me every step of the way.  

 *Shout out to my grandma in Idaho, Robin Moffitt, who helped us know what to look for, and what questions to ask, and answered many of our questions along the way.  FYI, anyone looking for a home in the Boise/Nampa area, Gold Star Realty is the way to go! Thanks Grandma!!
For more About Me, visit http://blog.allthingstristen.com/search/label/About%20Me
For more Marriage/Family, visit http://blog.allthingstristen.com/search/label/Marriage%2FFamily
     

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