Gettin' a Move On
This week we decided to buy a house in Bloomington. We are ready to pull the trigger.
We went out and got pre-qualified for a mortgage and then spent some time online stalking the MLS. We were still kind of on the fence in the rent vs. own debate.
On one hand: Renting=flexibility and not having to fix or pay for things yourself.
On the other hand: Renting means living in a place where the landlord has no incentive to do anything but the absolute bare minimum in upkeep.
Case in point: our current house.
Yes, we love the location. We loooove our neighbors. But when we moved in there were all sorts of things: (1) a terrible smell; (2) exposed carpet tacks in smelly carpet; (3) the owner did not remove any of the prior tenant's nail holes in the wall; (4) flooding under the house...blah blah blah. Yeah yeah, he sent his incompetent carpenter over to "fix" a few things in a makeshift way here and there, but it was never done chanto (the Japanese way of saying good and proper). The garage door spring also snapped in half but he didn't bother to replace the door...etc., etc.
THEN the landlord wanted us to tell him whether we planned to renew our lease...and he wanted to know by the first week of November (since we'd been living here, oh, all of three months). We told him we needed a few weeks to decide. After a few curt emails from him telling us we HAD to decide in "within the next week" so he could start advertising the house, we came home the other night and there was a "For Rent" sign posted in front of the house.
Oh. I guess that made our decision a little easier.
What a jerk! Honestly we are ideal renters. We don't even wear shoes in the house so we keep the carpet clean, we always pay our rent on time...ugh. He is a jerk.
I am also baffled about why he needs to advertise the house now...for a rental starting in August 2010.
And so, to spite him we are moving out and buying a house. Or rather...it's actually so affordable to buy here that our mortgage payment would be about the same as paying rent.
So far we like this house. Thoughts?
We went out and got pre-qualified for a mortgage and then spent some time online stalking the MLS. We were still kind of on the fence in the rent vs. own debate.
On one hand: Renting=flexibility and not having to fix or pay for things yourself.
On the other hand: Renting means living in a place where the landlord has no incentive to do anything but the absolute bare minimum in upkeep.
Case in point: our current house.
Yes, we love the location. We loooove our neighbors. But when we moved in there were all sorts of things: (1) a terrible smell; (2) exposed carpet tacks in smelly carpet; (3) the owner did not remove any of the prior tenant's nail holes in the wall; (4) flooding under the house...blah blah blah. Yeah yeah, he sent his incompetent carpenter over to "fix" a few things in a makeshift way here and there, but it was never done chanto (the Japanese way of saying good and proper). The garage door spring also snapped in half but he didn't bother to replace the door...etc., etc.
THEN the landlord wanted us to tell him whether we planned to renew our lease...and he wanted to know by the first week of November (since we'd been living here, oh, all of three months). We told him we needed a few weeks to decide. After a few curt emails from him telling us we HAD to decide in "within the next week" so he could start advertising the house, we came home the other night and there was a "For Rent" sign posted in front of the house.
Oh. I guess that made our decision a little easier.
What a jerk! Honestly we are ideal renters. We don't even wear shoes in the house so we keep the carpet clean, we always pay our rent on time...ugh. He is a jerk.
I am also baffled about why he needs to advertise the house now...for a rental starting in August 2010.
And so, to spite him we are moving out and buying a house. Or rather...it's actually so affordable to buy here that our mortgage payment would be about the same as paying rent.
So far we like this house. Thoughts?
