what's number 1? I bet it's waiting for Publisher's Clearance House to come knocking.

Congratulations! Buying your first home (or, really, any home) is a big deal. Some good advice I got once was to hire your own inspector, rather than use the one recommended by your agent. While you may have a good agent, you need to remember that the agent's motivation is to see the sale go through, he/she may (intentionally or not) pick an inspector who tends to gloss over potential issues.

On the other hand, when your inspector finds things you need to be very level-headed about what it all means. No house is perfect, so there will probably be things the inspector finds. Try to figure out what each really means to you, in the context of the overall house purchase. If there are a few things that need fixing but can be handled for a few hundred dollars, don't even raise those with the seller (you're paying a few hundred thousand dollars). For anything more significant (but not worth walking away over), either have the seller discount the purchase price by the expected cost of repairs or put some of the purchase price an escrow you can draw againt to make repairs (with the remainder going to the seller). Even though it may seem like a hassle to have the repairs done yourself (you want to move into a perfect place), there is a certain comfort that comes from knowing that you had the repairs done right, instead of wondering whether the seller (who just wants to get this over with) cut any corners in the repairs.

Anyway, I didn't mean to badger you about inspections and such. Seriously, congratulations on the purchase.

Congrats Pur!

You sound like your in the same position I was 6 months ago when I bought my townhome. One thing to think about is a home warranty company. Usually the seller pays and it can come in handy if some big maintanence thing comes up.

I remember a coworker of mine telling me how he signed the contract to his house, then proceeded to throw up on the way home. Now his house is paid for, and he's fixed it up really nice.

It is certainly a nerve wracking experience, but that goes away, and then you are just faced with endless upkeep. That keeps your mind off the mortgage.

Honestly, though, owning your own home is wonderful. Congrats!

Congrats Pur! The SO and I will be looking to take the plunge sometime in the next 12 months, as well. Glad to hear the good news.

Congrats, Pur & Kiri!
We just closed on our house on the 17th. So I know where you're coming from. So much money disappearing away and a bundle of bricks & dirt to tie you to one spot for the forseeable future!

We went with a tracker, actually. The bank was running a deal for a lifetime tracker at a certain percentage above BoE, so we signed up, thinking the rates would drop over the next 12 months and we could lock into a fixed-rate mortgage at a lower interest rate.

Also, knowing the area, I'm glad you found something affordable. Where abouts exactly?

Congrats on your house!

I think the rectal probe the bank wants you to volunteer for is more stressful. We had a good loan officer who got us pre-approved for the amount we were looking for. We found the house and had 99% of our paperwork into the bank a month before close. Our problem was the house we bought was a foreclosure, and the bank holding the property didn't sign off on the closing day. So, we had to wait a day to get the keys. Now, had we been one day late, they wanted to charge us X dollars a day past the agreed closure date. That bank gets a big F-U

Um.... Kiri is Robear's wife. My wife doesn't take much interest in message boards, though I've tried to lure her here a few times.

The townhome is located in Columbia, pretty close to where I-95 meets I-32, though far enough away so that you wouldn't know that if you didn't know the area. Since I currently work over in Gaithersburg, I've become a lot more focused on finding a job closer to home... I really don't want that drive to work every day, even for what I make now ($14.77/hr just isn't enough for me to spend close to 3 hours in traffic every day). We'll be pretty close to Ft. Meade though, so I'm putting in my resume over there for any job they might hire me for.

Sounds like the same market here. $255 was on the cheaper end of the homes our realtor kept sending us.

Since a few people have mentioned some of this stuff, we asked $255k (their asking price) with 6% back for closing costs (around $11k). It should take care of the taxes, first year of warranty, insurance, etc. We met face to face with our loan officer at our realtor's office, so that together we could work out all the numbers without having to play phone tag. He gave us all the numbers, worked out what our monthly payments should be (with HOA and stuff, though it'll be a tad bit lower now), so at least we have a firm idea on that.

The funny thing is, a few weeks back we put in the exact same offer on another town home on that block, which was listed at $269,900. His counter offer was $275k if he had to pay the closing we were asking for. His was more run down, and required more major work to it before we'd be happy moving in. With this home, there was another person bidding for it, but apparently they had been negotiating for a much lower price than we were for the last couple weeks. The only thing they didn't like about our offer was the closing date (originally late-Feb to be safe), which we bumped up a month, and they accepted immediately. I kinda wish we would have put in a slighly lower offer, but then again, we might have lost the home if we had.

It's only scary for a week or so. Then you start the never ending to-do list and you won't have time to be scared.

We've been through that. We were looking at some townhomes being built about a quarter mile away from our current appartment (we're fairly close to DC, which doesn't help), and they wanted $450k for the cheaper ones, with about $20k down, on top of about $15k-$20k in closing costs and taxes. We stopped looking altogether for quite a while after that.

My fault. Apologies to anyone who was offended by the above statement.
I knew that, but that's what you get when you post in haste. Or as I like to call it 'posthaste.'

Caveat: This error in no way diminishes the congratulations extended.

Here is a good question. Did you choose high points in exchange for lower interest rate or did you go mid road or low road on the points. For me looking at buying my first home it's the difference of nearly $4k on closing costs alone looking at a difference of 1% on fixed interest over all (30 year). All the calculations I do say I will break even on that initial 4 grand at around the 7 year mark but 4 grand right now is more difficult to come up with since I would still need to pay for movers, paint, fixing stuff and have some left over just in case something big breaks.

So high points or low points? Keep in mind that housing in my area is around the $150,000 mark.

P.S. On a side note it pisses me off that a new construction home that is 1600 sq ft costs as much as a 2200 sq ft home that is 20 years old. Even though it's older that much less space irks me. It's not like people have gotten smaller since the 80's.

extra rent for animals?? wow, what a bs to get more money from people!
Anyway, owning your own place is one of the best investments you can do.
Providing you can keep up with the mortgage and maintenance

Congrats Pur'! I know you have been wanting to do this for awhile, so very cool it's finally going to happen. Good luck with it everything!

Congrats Pur and Mrs. Pur! This is so exciting. We just bought our free standing townhome about 15 months ago and I love it. Not to mention we went from a one bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom place that we can call our own. I, fortunately, didn't have to deal with much of the paperwork since my sweet husband (fiance at the time) took care of most everything.