Our Home Story (Part 1/3)

Since last year we have been planning to buy a house. Everyone around us always tells us now is a good time to buy and we can get a great deal - there is also $8000 tax incentive until December. A few other things which motivated us to get our own place:

- We are really looking forward to having our own washer/dryer, right now we have to share them with every other person in our apartment building and sometimes we have to wait in line.

- People on the first floor smoke like chimneys, and often we cannot open our balcony or windows, in order to spare our lungs from this toxic air.

- We need more space for our stuff (2 people living in a one-bedroom apartment), and I am soooo looking forward to having my own closet

- We can have a dog finally - this apartment only allows cats

- I really want to paint and do some home improvements

But other than that, we will miss this apartment:

- I will miss how cozy this place is, we are always together in the same room because there are only 2 main areas: the living room and bedroom.

- The view in the backyard - ah. the Mississippi river!

- How cheap this place is for us and how much money is saves us each month, compared to a typical 2-bedroom apartment, or (yikes) a mortgage!

- How we don't have to worry about maintenance (kind of... see my post, 2008)

But we have to move on and start searching for an agent to help us with buying our first home. Yes this will be our FIRST HOME (we are both house-hunting novices). So after asking around, we met our first agent: Becca - who is the gf of our hiking leader. She was nice and sent us links every week with all the townhomes based on the criteria we wanted. Then we just had to tell her which ones we wanted and she made appointments for us and visited the places with us.

However after several appointments, we felt she didn't understand about townhomes since she just started being an agent one year ago and she always sold houses. So we ended our agreement with her and think it would be better to go with someone who is more experienced since we are first-time home buyers and we need someone to guide us instead of learning with them.

So -- what happened next? You'll have to wait and see until Part 2... heheeee, see ya!