Homeowners now!
Wow! We own a house. It's still hard to believe that we started the year by just looking for another place to rent, preferably cheaper. After many unsuccessful attempts at finding a rental property that's actually reasonably priced and well maintained we decided to see what the condo market in Austin had to offer. After all, we were in a national housing slump.
Although the Austin market has cooled down quite a bit, it's not exactly in a slump. If you don't know the condo market in Austin has been crazy over the past few years with high-rise residential buildings coming up almost everyday along the shores of Lake Austin. The downtown landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years. And most of this is supposedly caused by empty nesters wanting to move back to central Austin, investors and young professionals who want to live the downtown life. After looking at a couple of condos we realized that even condos have their drawbacks. First off, the prices have not cooled off, at-least not for Austin standards, and those that we could "afford" did not necessarily have that "wow" factor. And then you have astronomical HOA fees and sometimes even parking issues. After a weekend or two of looking at condos we quickly shifted our search to houses in central Austin.
Working with Lisa (who is an expert for central Austin) we started searching for a place we can call home. It was an exciting yet exhaustive process. For us novices in the art of house hunting, we had a roller coaster ride of emotions. Staying up late night, excitedly viewing the virtual galleries of houses on the Internet. Driving by properties dreaming of what might be our house. Disappointed to see that the pictures were better then the real thing. Sometimes disappointed to realize that what we liked, where we liked was not affordable by our standards. It was one such late afternoon after viewing a few houses that we were just driving by a neighborhood when we came across this quaint little cottage. My wife immediately loved it. She excitedly called up Lisa. I think we were sold by the back porch of the house. We saw ourselves spending many an afternoon reading under the trees. Viewing the inside we realized that there was definitely some drawbacks to the place. The kitchen was a "bit" outdated and small. The bathroom was dark and dingy. On the bright side the house had lots of windows and natural light.
Although we did not immediately jump to write up an offer we always had this house in mind and over the next few weeks we would always return back to this house to see what we needed or wanted to do to make it our home. Within a few weeks with no other homes coming into the market we started working the numbers to see if this with some work could be our home. We loved the location. Blocks from parks, grocery stores, restaurants and shops it is central living just in the outskirts of downtown.
So here we are, 3 months after starting to look for a place to live, owning our first home. She will need a bit of loving and care but we have rolled up our sleeves and ready to make the plunge into renovating a 1947 cottage. We don't want her to lose her charm so we are carefully considering any renovation and extension we do. Now the fun begins!
Although the Austin market has cooled down quite a bit, it's not exactly in a slump. If you don't know the condo market in Austin has been crazy over the past few years with high-rise residential buildings coming up almost everyday along the shores of Lake Austin. The downtown landscape has changed dramatically in the last few years. And most of this is supposedly caused by empty nesters wanting to move back to central Austin, investors and young professionals who want to live the downtown life. After looking at a couple of condos we realized that even condos have their drawbacks. First off, the prices have not cooled off, at-least not for Austin standards, and those that we could "afford" did not necessarily have that "wow" factor. And then you have astronomical HOA fees and sometimes even parking issues. After a weekend or two of looking at condos we quickly shifted our search to houses in central Austin.
Working with Lisa (who is an expert for central Austin) we started searching for a place we can call home. It was an exciting yet exhaustive process. For us novices in the art of house hunting, we had a roller coaster ride of emotions. Staying up late night, excitedly viewing the virtual galleries of houses on the Internet. Driving by properties dreaming of what might be our house. Disappointed to see that the pictures were better then the real thing. Sometimes disappointed to realize that what we liked, where we liked was not affordable by our standards. It was one such late afternoon after viewing a few houses that we were just driving by a neighborhood when we came across this quaint little cottage. My wife immediately loved it. She excitedly called up Lisa. I think we were sold by the back porch of the house. We saw ourselves spending many an afternoon reading under the trees. Viewing the inside we realized that there was definitely some drawbacks to the place. The kitchen was a "bit" outdated and small. The bathroom was dark and dingy. On the bright side the house had lots of windows and natural light.
Although we did not immediately jump to write up an offer we always had this house in mind and over the next few weeks we would always return back to this house to see what we needed or wanted to do to make it our home. Within a few weeks with no other homes coming into the market we started working the numbers to see if this with some work could be our home. We loved the location. Blocks from parks, grocery stores, restaurants and shops it is central living just in the outskirts of downtown.
So here we are, 3 months after starting to look for a place to live, owning our first home. She will need a bit of loving and care but we have rolled up our sleeves and ready to make the plunge into renovating a 1947 cottage. We don't want her to lose her charm so we are carefully considering any renovation and extension we do. Now the fun begins!
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