Moving Day

[affreca]

Yep. We get keys to new place at noon. Everything is finally packed, now have to get it moved. Already put the first load in the truck (kitchen table, futons, rugs and stereo), so that we can unload it. Apparently, our landlord is delegating the check out for this place to the maintainence man, so we have probably seen him for the last time. Next landlord is showing flakiness by posting on larryville that there is free stuff infront of the house until noon. Not much notice for other people. And I don't trust people to catch the before noon part and leave our stuff along (as it might be in the yard as it goes in). Whatever. Just more push to buy a place before long.

I could do some more cleaning, but.. waiting until bathroom and kitchen are empty. Spent some of the morning watching the outside cats play. I don't often see uncle/father cats play with kittens, so that was quite adorable.

Comments

push to buy a place

[mouseking.livejournal.com]

You really should do everything possible to by a home soon. It's a buyer's market now and rates will keep climbing slowly, in part because of that. If you keep waiting until you are completely ready, you will never be ready.

There are quite a number of programs available (and many good mortgage brokers out there) that can get you going with no money down, no PMI, first time homebuyer, etc. That's the route I had to go (no down and no PMI) - if I hadn't I would have never gotten out of renting. If they can get me into a house (and a decent one at that), they can get anybody into one.

Sure, you pay more for no PMI/no money down, but it's a temporary thing - we refinanced less than one year later, and were able to have the PMI waived and decrease our monthly payment by 300 (which was 100 less than what we had been paying while renting).

Even if it's not a house that you see spending the next 20 years in, it's better to have anything over renting (at least, that's true here and in most bigger metropolitan areas). Houses are very very much your friend at tax time - because of owning the house (all other things being unchanged) we went from owing ~1500 to getting nearly 6000 back.

Re: push to buy a place

[affreca.livejournal.com]

Actually, money wise I'm a lot better off than most grad students. I have enough for a decent down payment. I need to do more research, but I hear the VA house loans are a good deal. But, I plan to move in 1-2 years. I love Larryville, but I don't want to settle here. I want a few acres in the country, and I can't afford that around here, at least not close enough to commute easily to campus. And if I buy a house here, I will never get lawnchair to move.