The House Hunt

I am back!  Hoping to make some changes around here!  I know I have probably said that before BUT it is one of my resolutions this year to blog more and document our life.  So often I forget the little details and get going in our everyday life and forget about all the small wonderful things that happen throughout the week.  Hopefully by blogging more I can cherish those moments a little bit more!

Onto the house hunting.  I feel like it has been a while since we have done this since we are now officially homeowners!!!  We got to spend Christmas in our first home and it was great!  Very rushed, but still great to be in our home for our 2nd married Christmas.

We moved to Louisville in May for Matt's job and moved into an apartment not too far from my brother and his family and not too far from my parent's house.  The apartment was a good size but lacked character and nice finishes.  We were spoiled in Bowling Green, our apartment there had great appliances, crown molding, ceiling fans and vaulted ceilings AND a much better price!  I knew we would be paying more in Louisville with it being a bigger city, but it was a struggle to spend so much on rent when we knew we would be staying pretty long term.  SO, we started house hunting earlier than I think we both planned.  We wanted something that we could call our own and do weekend projects and actually hang stuff on the walls!

I guess we started looking in late August early September.  The first open house we ever went to was about 3 blocks over from my brother and sister in law.  They live in a really convenient area with some really cute brick cape cods.  I was really interested in cape cods and ranch style houses.  I also love the craftsmen style.  We knew that we either had to have a basement OR a garage - both would have been great!  We were looking for 3 bedrooms and at least 1 1/2 bath.  There was not a particular part of town we wanted to be in - just some parts of town we did not want to be in.

Love this home!  Not for sale, but I was getting inspiration!

That first open house did not have a basement or a garage and was more than we wanted to spend.  We continued to drive around and get a feel for what we wanted and figure out our price range.

Once we found some good contenders we went ahead and got pre approved.  We were surprised at how much they pre approved us for because we were not really comfortable paying that much!  We crunched some numbers and figured out what would be a good number for us.  That helped the house hunt go a lot smoother.  We didn't want to look at anything that we could not afford.

We found a brick ranch house that we both really liked that was freshly painted, all new appliances, vaulted ceilings, brand new fence in the backyard - but it did not have a basement or a garage.  The price was in our price range but not really what we wanted to pay for the space and lack of basement and garage.  We went back and forth about that house as we continued to look. 

Another one of our requirements were that we could make it our own.  We wanted to have projects and to make the house ours.  We did not want to have to completely redo a house.  We were willing to move some walls around or take some down and redo some bathroom work, but I did not want to live in a construction zone.

We kept the brick ranch house we both liked in the back of our heads as we continued to look September - November.  After about 20 open houses we found 1 that we wanted to make an offer on.  We went back to the original brick ranch before making an offer on a different house thinking we would make an offer on that one first, but finally decided it was just not enough space and not practical.

I will fill you in on our first offer next time!  Follow along with us as we make our house a home!

Cheers!