We Bought the House
The search is over and we’ve bought the house. We found out a couple of days ago that the seller accepted the offer, so it looks like it’s full steam ahead. Thank goodness, too, because my wife and I were not enjoying our search.
It’s funny how it seems the more you spend on something, the less you enjoy the search for it. I know this has been true for us both times we’ve looked for a house and every time we’ve bought a car that I can think of. I guess it’s because there’s so much at stake. In the case of a house, and to a lesser extent when buying a car, you know you’re stuck with whatever your decision since transaction fees are so high. In other words, the costs of screwing up are extremely high.
Speaking of extremely high, despite the ‘buyer’s market’ we did end up spending more for the house than we’d initially planned. Reality has a way of colliding spectacularly with plans, though. We just couldn’t buy the house we wanted for the amount we wanted to spend. So we went up a little bit - about 15% higher than we’d planned.
Even so, we’re really pleased and excited about the house. It’s a new house (as in, new construction), something novel for us as a family. It’s bigger than our current house by about 35% to accommodate not one, but two home offices (I haven’t written about it, but I took a new job recently and it’s work-at-home). It has a nice, big, flat yard for playing. Oh, yeah, and it has granite counter tops. For some reason you have to have that today. Don’t ask me why.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
CONGRATULATIONS!!!
January 16th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Congratulations on buying the house! It sounds like you have a bit of buyer’s remorse - don’t worry that’s natural! That’s why there’s a term for it! It sounds like a nice move. That’s great that you have much more space and also that you can work from home. I worked at home in another job for about a year and it had its pros and cons but probably more pros. The thing to make sure of is that you separate your work space from living space. Since you have a home office, keep all your work in there and only work in there. Otherwise what happens is your entire house feels like your office and it feels like you never leave work.
January 17th, 2008 at 5:54 am
Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. And thanks, Festivus, for the advice about working at home. I’ve already been thinking the same thing about having a very separate space. My wife also works from home right now and she sometimes has trouble ‘leaving work.’