Excited - Home Loan Preapproval!

ChristenDG

So I'm very unhappy in our apartment, and I was watching HGTV too much as usual and decided to look and see what houses were up for sale in the area... Well, I fell in love with one...and I decided to fill out a prequalification application just for fun... Well I talked to them today and I got approved for a little more than the price of the house! I am so excited! I just have to talk DH into going and looking at the house! I'm so ready to be out of this apartment!

I'm just really excited right now, but I'm sure DH will probably not even want to go looking just because he's that way...

Does anyone have any advice or tips??

FutureMrsNAH

That's exciting. I want to move too (granted, we're in a townhouse, just smaller than I'd like). Good luck!

MarJo03

As for getting Dh on board... all I had to do was show him that our monthly payments after taxes for a townhouse were less expensive than the one bedroom apt we were renting. I dont know if thats the same in your case, but it worked well for me.

As you walk through the house make sure its something you'll want to live in for at least 5 years, and it will easily support a growing family. Our spare bedrooms are smaller than we'd like, but we're only planning on staying in the house for 5 years, max. Which means worse case we'll have a 4 year old and a baby, and the rooms will work for that. But not for two teenagers.

Make sure you look at everything, and take pictures. Check out the windows, and gutters, along with the water heater and sc unit. Anything that costs a lot of money to replace, look at it and determine the age (if its an older home). I'm also big at seeing the base board, the "bones" of a house. If its built weel, I dont care how new or old it is. And honestly some of the newer things going up are built crappy.

Good luck! Have fun looking, it's the best part!

Mitzzi23

Financially, make sure you have money set aside in case of problems. Right after we moved in to our new house the bathtub started leaking and needed to be fixed to the tune of $2700. The sewers also backed up in his house and our last house. Our last houses sewer disaster was about $3000! Aside from needing extra money, the bones of a house are much more important that the cosmetic way it looks. Bathrooms and kitchens are huge, make sure you have enough counter space and cabinet storage. Paint is simple to change. Also ask ages of the roof and furnace because those are expansive to replace.

ChristenDG

Thanks guys!

See, I let Josh get another dog under the condition we started looking for a house...then he lost his job, but we're back on track now and I need to do something! So...I'm going to talk to him AGAIN and see if he'll go look with me.

I am concerned about not having anything saved up...and the payments are about the same, if not less, than we're paying now. That's really my only concern right now. And really, if we budgeted better (again, got to get the hubs on board!) we could easily save some money. I worked A LOT at work recently when they offered overtime and I got everything caught up and we now can have money left over each month. They're about to start offering it again at work and I plan to do a lot to get us a good jump start on our savings.

I studied architecture (almost my career!) and my family built most of our house so I'm fairly knowledgeable as far as the bones of a house and codes and everything like that goes. And I definitely won't make a move without a thorough home inspection.

I told me dad and he is SUPER excited! He's already throwing so much at me I'm like, "Hold on, daddy! We haven't even looked at a house yet!"

I think I'm just afraid I'll get too excited and eager cause this is something I want SO bad. But I also am willing to sacrifice anything to get what I want. I'll do without cable, I'll hold off on school, heck I'll do everything by candlelight! That's just me...

Yeah, I'm REALLY excited!

SSM&JLM

After buying our house my 2 best pieces of advice are by lower than your approval amount, even looking into buying off just one of your income's and 2 like pp said, I would have at least 6 months expenses in an emergency fund and probably another $5k in a moving/house needs fund.  There are so many little things that come up and a million trips to home depot/lowes in those first few months.