If you wondered if I had crawled under a rock for the last couple weeks, then you were right! I’ve mentioned over the last month or so that I have been looking for a house to buy. And, my girl friend and I signed for one last week!

We are very excited but also nervous. It’s a huge investment! The whole experience was about as expected. It had plenty of up’s and down’s, and the overall stress level was high. There were days when I wanted to go into work just to get away from it all. I always knew the end would justify the journey, but getting through it all was still difficult — especially since we are first time home buyers.

Ironically, we ended up buying in a new development that I had mentioned in an earlier post. Initially, we felt that Harbour Pointe would be out of our price range (initially about $350k). However, after seeing approximately 10 places in Locust Point, we came to realize that you just don’t get a lot of bang for the buck for $350k. The homes were okay, but they didn’t impress us.  And when you’re making a investment of several hundred thousand dollars, you really want more than “it’s okay.”

Comparing Harbour Pointe to the re-sales on the market, it seemed that for an additional 15% ($50k), you literally got twice the house. We re-ran our numbers and decided we could stretch a little and afford Harbour Pointe.

To recap the points I made the previous post, for an extra $50k, you go from a 12 ft wide row home to a 20 ft wide town home. You also get a 2 car garage (which is pretty much unheard of in the city). City parking honestly sucks, so parking is a huge perk. Older homes (rehabs and resales) usually don’t have parking because the lot is so old (100 years) that homes weren’t spec’ed out for cars back then. Lastly, while many re-sales are rehabbed, clearly new construction is less risky in terms of maintenance, etc. To further support the value of these new homes, I’ll quote the sales numbers.  They have sold 6 of the 9 units in the current phase in only 8 weeks. 2 of 3 remaining are end units (always harder to sell). To sell that many so quickly in such a down real estate market really says a lot about the price point of the project.

Anyway, my initial intention was to blog throughout my home buying process as a sort of diary, but I quickly got too busy.  However, there is not to say I didn’t get many “lessons learned” which I plan to share over the next few weeks. This will include budgeting, buyer agents, choosing a lender, choosing a loan, security systems, and much more! Stay tuned.