House Hunt Update: Shelving the Search

The time has come. I’m hang­ing up my house hunt­ing hat for now 🙁

I don’t want to stop look­ing. Men­tal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, mon­e­tar­i­ly: I’m ready to buy a property.

The prob­lem lies with the mar­ket in my area. There have been very few hous­es com­ing up for sale, and the ones that have come up are not any­where near what my stan­dards require. Foun­da­tion issues, sig­nif­i­cant delayed main­te­nance issues, major updat­ing require­ments.…. I’ve seen some prop­er­ties that should­n’t be any­where near the market.

There have been a few prop­er­ties that have come up that have been decent, but they were either priced too high or I was­n’t able to look at them before some­one else got there first and put in an offer. 

I have the pre-approval to buy a prop­er­ty with a VA Loan. Fun­ni­ly enough, that’s one of the few ben­e­fits I got from serv­ing in the mil­i­tary for 6 years. I don’t even qual­i­fy for any of my state’s Vet­er­an Assis­tance pro­grams! I did get some ben­e­fits while in school though, so I’ll stop whin­ing now. [Side­note: in prepa­ra­tion for my trip to Eng­land, I’ve been brush­ing up on my British slang terms. I real­ly like how they use whinge­ing for whining.]

While not hav­ing to come up with much of a down pay­ment is super nice, I’m hav­ing prob­lems deal­ing with the year long pri­ma­ry res­i­dence clause. Since I am poten­tial­ly mov­ing from the area when my cur­rent posi­tion ends in 5 ish months, I can’t jus­ti­fy buy­ing a prop­er­ty and say­ing I’d live there for a year when I real­ly intend to move way before that. I was will­ing to live there for 8 or so months and pre­tend I did­n’t know, but 5–6 months is push­ing that ethics enve­lope a bit too much for my comfort.

Real­ly, being forced to wait isn’t the end of the world. This gives me more time to accu­mu­late a nice, big, fat down pay­ment and hope­ful­ly find the per­fect prop­er­ty! (or as per­fect as one can get in this world) My lender is will­ing to wait and work with me wher­ev­er I end up, pro­vid­ed he is licensed for the area I move to. If I end up stay­ing here, my real­tor would be more than hap­py to open my file again and help me. In the mean time, I’ll buy him a few beers after one of our soft­ball games to say thanks for all of his help.

I’m also hap­py I don’t have to deal with my apart­ment. I have an attrac­tive rent for my unit size, but adver­tis­ing, coör­di­nat­ing with peo­ple to view my apart­ment, get­ting all the paper­work for a sub­lease arranged and mov­ing out would be a pain, so I’m rather glad to be rid of that require­ment. Plus.….. I can use the pool for the summer! 😎

Have you had some­thing not work out? If so, how did you cope?