Buying a house...for the rest of your life

       Johanna and I are purchasing a home. I am very excited and right now we are in the "option period" which is the 11 days after the sellers accept your offer. When you buy a house you might not know all the stuff you go through in order to move in. You would think it was fairly simple. You give money to someone for a house and then you move in. Well it is not simple at all, and I would suggest that you be prepared for a silly crazy money signing tax paper explosion of work. I have to give it up to Johanna who has been working basically around the clock to make this happen. First you find a house, it has to be the right house. Right location, do you like the layout, the yard, the bathrooms, but wait you will own the house so you can change the bathroom. This changes your view of a house, but what if you do not want to change the bathroom or kitchen or redo the floors because you do not want to spend the money. So you want a nice house with some updates so you do not have to do them yourself, but you do not want to spend too much money on the house, and updates mean more money. So what do you do. Well when you find the house you will just know. You find the house and you want it. You call your realtor and put a bid in. Make sure your printer and scanner work...oh you don't have a scanner, whats wrong with you, its 2010. Oh you are not rich like everyone else, I get it. So use the one at your work, but don't let anyone know because you might get into trouble. So print the bid and sign it then send it back. They accepted your offer, this is great, now you have 11 days to do all this: get the house inspected, you might want to get a plumbing inspection, and a termite inspection, all this costs money. The inspector will give you a run down.....wait a second, the bank who is lending the money for the house wants you w2's from the last 2 years, oh and your paycheck stubs from the last 2 months. What? you don't have all this just perfectly filed away to use. Well you better call your work and get this stuff. Mind you only have 11 days so you better make it quick, OK send that into the bank lender. Back to the inspector, their is about 8,000 dollars worth of problems with the house, and this is normal and small. If there had been a problem with plumbing or foundation then you probably wont get the house. So 8,000 is not much. Did you make sure you can afford the monthly payments by using the mortgage calculator on the website you found the house on. You mortgage come out to a fairly low price, nice, but now add taxes and insurance to it and it almost doubles. No joke 40% of my monthly mortgage will go right to taxes and insurance. So now tell the sellers that you want them to fix the 8,000 dollars worth of problems and hopefully you can work out a deal. You still have to get the house appraised and then finally sign the huge million page contract for the bank to get the money. Also if the appraisal of the house, which is done by the bank, comes out to less than what you are buying it for then the sellers have to lower their price, if they don't then you don't get the house. The bank is not going to pay more than the house is worth. So you got insurance right. This is also hard because a lot of places won't insure you depending on the area or the house or you. Oh also if their is a hurricane in the gulf on the day of closing the house then you can't get it. The bank and the insurance place is not going to buy this house or insure it if a hurricane is just going to destroy the house in 2 weeks. All this costs money and time. One other thing is that since you only have 11 days to do all this, it is non stop. You might a get an email at 9:30 telling you to send in some form you didn't sign. Its crazy!!!

Hopefully when all this work is said and done you will have a home. Maybe it did not work out and you will have to do all this over again. I just hope a get a handshake somewhere in all this from someone, anyone, will someone please just shake my hand. I give you money for a house and you shake my hand. done!!!