To All the Houses I've Loved Before

The Prof and I have been looking for a house now for...years. It's an exhausting ride, I'll tell you. Sometimes I think back to our first (totally impulsive yet accepted) offer almost five years ago and wonder "what if" we had gone through with that purchase? We'd be 1/6 through our years of loan payments, probably done a refinance, and still likely nursing sore backs from the massive amount of wallpaper removal and painting.

Since then, I've let real estate bygones be bygones, and tried to embrace apartment living -- we've been in two now -- learning as much as possible about down payments, interest rates, debt-to-income ration, FHA loans, and the cost of {insert expensive renovation job.} We've missed the high market, the low market, the tax incentives, the reaaaally low mortgage rates, and yet still we are houseless.

I'm hoping that this will be our year. One could hardly call me picky at this point -- I have towns from the North Shore to South on our MLS list, and am willing to consider Metro-anything. I'm open to a Victorians, Colonials, Ranches, Contemporaries, hell, anything with a roof. And I'll even take a bad roof.

(WARNING: whining ahead) One thing that is so frustrating about the Boston area is the cost and availablitiy of of quality housing. I'm embarrassed to even talk about this deficit with my friends/family back in PA -- even though they might sympathize, it would only be until they pass out once I mention the cost of houses that Mark and I have seen around the Bean.

Sometimes I think that we'll be falling asleep listening to our upstairs neighbor playing video games in our forties. Unless...we could win the HGTV dream house in Vermont. (And if anyone reading this wins, you own me an invite for the weekend!)

Cue the Elvis...and a nostalgic trip back:

Comments

[pnatty]

I never enter online contests, but my sister insisted that I enter for the HGTV dream home.

Having done so, I am absolutely certain I will win, and I hereby invite you up to visit as soon as I get the keys.