The Easy Part is Done
Now we are just a mere 360 monthly payments away from owning a home.
That is, of course, not going to happen with this first place. The first home is an investment, a starter to get the ol' equity love train out of the station so that we can begin to generate enough wealth to buy a house in the neighborhood where we are now. But since the housing prices are truly astonishingly high, we're forced to buy a house outside of the area and then work our way back.

How much does the median home in Santa Cruz cost? Try $550,000. That's the average and yeah, that scares the crap right out of me.

We're just a few hundred thousand shy of that mark now but will, with diligence and perseverance, slowly get ourselves to the point where we can afford to buy a home here. If not a home then land to build our home on.

The process is in motion, the paperwork is being filled out, the t's are getting crossed, the i's are getting dots. Its actually happening, we're actually buying a home and it scares me. Looking at hard numbers, breaking down where each dollar from our paychecks is going every month, I don't know how it will all work out but I know it will. We will find a way, I'm sure of that. But I didn't sleep well last night because I had so many numbers floating through my mind. That and the fear that we'll get in way over our heads and drown in mortgage payments, insurance costs, taxes and then there's the not so small matter of a pending baby.

I wish we had enough space to rent a room out or that P would entertain the idea. But she won't, she wants the place all for ourselves and I like the idea but having someone else kicking in a few hundred a month would certainly help an awful lot.

We are getting a whole lot of house though and that's the good part. I will become a commuter again but its a short commute and I'll be able to deal with it most days without any issue. The good part is that we're moving to a town that's growing very, very quickly and that means (hopefully) that our house will appreciate in value quickly as well. And appreciation is what we're in this game for. Generating more money to spend on another house to generate more money to spend on another house. Sounds like a good time, eh? Maybe not.

But let's get into the house itself and why we choose to put a bid in on it.
Its big, it has a lot of space. Three bedrooms which means that we'll have a room specifically for the baby as well an office space room for all my geek toys. It has a good sized back yard, big enough to get a dog and that was huge. Beyond huge really. I know it will be alot to have a puppy and a baby but if we get the dog soon it will have a few months to get grown into itself before the baby arrives. The house has a two car garage which means we have an awesome amount of storage space to work with. Its attached to the house and that means no wet trips to the garage to get stuff in the middle of the night. The house gets good light from its mostly southern exposure.

A big thing is that the current owners have been there for the entire time since the house was built and they've not really put much effort into upgrading the place which means that its almost like a blank canvass for us. We can upgrade components, upgrade rooms and will see the value of the house appreciate that much more quickly while also creating a better living environment for the both of us. The house is almost brand new, less than 20 years old, and that means there will be less hassles with the foundation, with things breaking, with anything going wrong.

The house also has hookups built in for washer and dryer units which means no more late trips to the laundromat to dry all our clothes on Sunday nights. Something I'm sure to appreciate as P gets less and less active as her belly swells to cartoonish proportions.

Now all we have to do is let our broker and their agent hash out the details and we will hopefully have a timetable to relocate from our present apartment to the house. There are all kinds of middle steps that have to happen but the process is in motion now and I'm looking forward to being in our own house. It will hurt for the first few months to scrimp together the mortgage payments as we re-adjust to the higher numbers but, in the end, we'll be working towards our future and no burning the equity power of our monthly rent checks, we'll be saving a little bit of each of them for our future.

The fact that I get to get a dog and a car is just icing on the whole cake. So now I'm buried in dog research and will need to get in touch with my motorcycle shop to see about trading in my SV for a Concours again. I need a bigger bike again and the Concours is a damned fine machine for my needs.

Keep your fingers crossed that the process is at an end and we've found our home for the next few years!