Home Sweet Home

Yesterday, Keegan and I started a very big, very important process in our lives. We went and talked to a mortgage broker at bank here in town to get pre-approved for a mortgage on a house. We have had a few bumps in the road in the few months we've been on this journey, the biggest one being that Keegan doesn't have any credit. He has been lucky enough to be able to pay for school and his car, probably the two biggest purchases that people use to gain credit, with cash, so he has no credit to speak of (seriously, his credit report comes back saying +/- 0.) This causes a big problem because obviously, one has to have credit to purchase something as big as a house. In the last few months, we've tried to get him a credit card so he could start building up credit, but he's been turned down because he doesn't have credit to begin with. It's been one big frustrating circle. Thank goodness our realtor pointed us in the direction of a mortgage lady at a bank here in town that could help us out. She asked us to bring in all of Keegan's bills for the last few years proving that he hasn't missed any payments (thank goodness Keegan kept them, I don't keep these things.) She also asked us to bring in bank statements and his offer letter from his job showing that he has enough money to make the monthly mortgage payments. With this (large) stack of papers, she was basically able to input a bunch of numbers into the computer and tell the credit bureau to make Keegan a credit score based on the fact that he's never missed a payment on any of his bills.

With the "fake" credit score from our mortgage lady, we went to our realtor today and told him that we're ready to put in an offer on a house. We went through the contract that we'd be signing and told him all of the things that we'd like the builder to do while he's finishing the house (the house we want is currently being built so we have some say in what goes into it,) such as adding a fence and making sure it's wired for cable and internet. Our realtor also said that since he's representing the builder and he knows him well, he's pretty sure the builder would allow us to make some decisions on things as he's finishing up such as the color of the tile going over the fireplace and what chandelier we want in the dining room, small details that most home buyers don't have control over until they've bought the house. Keegan wants to take one more look at the house and make sure that we've added in all of the things that we want into the contract before we officially put in an offer, but since he has to go out of town Thursday and Friday for work, we can't do that until Saturday.

Hopefully we'll be able to do one final look at the house Saturday and officially put an offer in on the house. We're thinking of putting in an offer that's about $8,000 less that what the builder wants, so hopefully he'll accept it. If he does, we're going to ask for him to finish the house by the end of January (we don't want to close this year for tax reasons,) and we'll close by the end of February. By the beginning of March, we'll be able to leave our apartment and be home owners! I really hope this all works out. I'd love to not live in an apartment anymore; it's become such a hassle to live 45 minutes from work and I honestly hate living in a college town and in a college apartment building. It wasn't so bad when we were college students, but now hearing drunk college students at midnight bugs me to no end. I need my beauty sleep! I'll keep you posted on how things go Saturday, and maybe post some pictures of the house.

For now, here's the one picture I have of the outside of the house, taken from the realtor's site.

And the layout/blueprint

Kind of hard to read, but the "arm" at the top left is the master suite with the bedroom, two walk in closets and the master bathroom. I'll post more pictures with more details on Saturday. 

Have a good day and rest of the week!