House Hunting?

It is almost official… we sold our house in Wentzville Missouri. In the words of Mungundus Feltcher (a Harry Potter character) “bleedin’ give it away, din’t I?” which is exactly how I feel about selling our house. We are barely breaking even, we may even end up owing a few hundred dollars when all is said and done, of course a few hundred dollars now is much better than a monthly mortgage. I am so excited that our new agent Linda Arnold, with Coldwell Banker and Gundaker, sold our house on it’s 5^th day on the market! However, I will not scream for joy until all papers are signed the end of November.

We plan on saving what we have been paying in mortgage, utilities, etc and saving it for a down payment for a house in Kansas. We are still researching but Simon heard from a realtor’s daughter at his work that unless you can put down 20%, 5% is fine. I do know when we bought our first house the difference between a $15 k down payment and a $20k down payment was less than $20 a month difference.

Obviously we still have much researching to do and I will gladly post all I have learned in hopes that my experience can help others on the brink of home ownership, or re-home ownership. Who knew borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars could be stressful?

As for house hunting we are seriously considering Olathe Kansas, a city just South West of Overland Park, or OP. We do enjoy OP however it is a very pricey place to live and all of the homes we can afford have wood paneling and horrendous carpet, if we have to buy a house that is not so aesthetically pleasing we need to know that we can afford to alter the home. Olathe homes in our budget are much more up to date and like OP Olathe also has a very good public school system. I am not looking forward to a 5 minute longer commute (I hate driving, Simon drives us everywhere) but for a nicer home that is still minutes from all the amenities we have become so accustomed to I think it will be worth it.

Today we got in the car and drove to Olathe, we found the trip was pretty pointless as we really don’t know Olathe and having quick access to the highway is very important to us. However I enjoyed seeing the shops and restaurants and we did drive through a few neighborhoods. Our favorite was the neighborhood with lots of 3 car garages… which is a bummer because we can NOT afford a home with 3 garages!

We are lucky to know a couple that is also looking in Olathe and plan on buying before us, so we can definitely mooch off of their experiences! Our lease is up the end of May so we do have a while to get our act together!

If anyone has any home buying questions let me know, we have done this once and if I don’t know the answer I will find out for you!