Looking for a home

So after about 6 months of renting above 2 loud dogs and a woman who cooks meat every night we decided to look for a home of our own.
It started as a joke, looking at listings and going to open houses in the neighborhood. We started out not knowing our price range but knowing that we did not want our mortgage payment to be more than our rent in NY. We found a few great places in our neighborhood in Maplewood, we went to see this one in particular that we thought was great.

It was on a corner lot, in our price range with all new appliances that came with the home, 2 stories and a basement that I would not be afraid of. We freaked out and called everyone we knew. Called a friend of ours who was a broker and hoped to start the process.

Our friend the broker got out of the car and took one look at the house and said walk away "this place is a dump". Turns out that the reason that the price was so low was that it had been on the market for a year and was sloping and cracking down the hill it was built on.

This realization began the start of having to know way more about the bones on a house than you'll ever want to know. Thankfully our broker/ friend is quite knowledgeable about this subject and from that point on only showed us homes that were built solidly well.

We looked at almost every home in Maplewood and Richmond Heights and even Dogtown. The experience was character building and made communication a necessity. My husband and I had it down to a science what we liked and did not like. We were able to walk into a home and within 5 minutes know weather or not we liked it.

At first there were cute things I would get hung up on, like a purple toilet and things I did not like such as the color a room was painted. But as the process woar on i started to realize that what mattered was the ground plan of a home and if it was solid.

Who knew that you could change all that cosmetic stuff? :)

After a few months of looking we got a call from a friend who saw a listing of a home that had just gone on the market. It was under our price range and in a neighborhood that I had not really thought of living in but still in Maplewood.

Now begins the waiting. . . .