News Flash – Room to Move!

Along the history of time, man has always striven to improve his lot in life. Specifically, his place of residence. Beginning when the first caveman brought home a new mammoth skin to spruce up the old homestead, and continuing up to and including April 28, 2008.

What am I getting at? Well, we went out and did something a little crazy. That’s right. We’ve bought a new house! We have been watching the housing market for awhile. Watching prices fall and keeping an eye on the houses we liked, we pondered. Never seriously considering making a move right now. I mean, we have enough cooking at the moment without that sort of craziness.

But, we were looking to refinance the house we’re in now, to lock in a lower rate. At the same time, just for informations sake, Jess asked the mortgage broker what we might be able to realistically be able to purchase without literally putting us in the poor house. The answer surprised us. Suddenly, a house we happened to walk through an open house back last Labor Day was well within striking distance. We found a good rule of thumb as far as how much house you could afford which was a monthly payment of no more than 25% of your gross monthly income. Needless to say, we’re well below that. (As an aside, it took us a bit to realize just how well off we are with our dual incomes. Amazing.)

We always referred to the house as “dream house”. Every so often we would check earthpoint.us to see if the house had sold yet. It still hadn’t. When we last looked a few weeks ago, we saw that not only was it still on the market, it had dropped significantly in price. That was what really got our wheels turning.

But, we weren’t going to rush into anything. We did our due diligence. Jess’ godmother is a realtor and a damn fine one at that. She wasn’t about to let us make a bad decision. So, together we showed her the house we liked. In addition, she made sure that we looked at a number of different houses all over the valley. We probably went into 10 or 12 different houses. Many of them were in the sweet spot of what we were looking for… new construction, 2000+ sq.ft., gourmet kitchen, soaker tub, good neighborhood… so on and so forth. However, none of the ones we saw even held a candle to “dream house”, even the ones that were much more expensive.

Sharon, the realtor, agreed that the house we liked was an amazing deal. Even at the advertised asking price, which we weren’t going to offer anyway.

Come Saturday, we decided we were going to make an offer. We offered a price some 30 grand below the asking price, which was a total of over $50,000 under the original listing price 2 years ago. And seller to pay all closing costs. And for the builder to fix a few minor cosmetic issues. We also asked for a 3% interest rate buy down, but that was really just gravy. They countered this afternoon with everything we wanted, including the price, but dropping the 3%. As I told Jess, we were swinging for a home run, but instead we settled for a bases clearing triple off the right field fence. Not bad at all.

To the features of the house!

• 2373 sq.ft.
• Single level
• 3 bed 2.5 bath
• Gourmet kitchen with gas range, stainless appliances, granite counter tops and a big prep island
• gas fireplace
• huge master suite
• Soaker tub and tiled walk in shower
• All walk in closets, with full closet organization installation in master
• separate office/den
• HUGE open space floor plan
• Plumbed for a central vac
• Fully wired for computer network (cat-5)
• 3 car garage
• Fully landscaped with grass, trees and shrubs and fully fenced
• Pressurized irrigation
• Community has rec centers, pools, ponds and tree lined streets
• Brand new elementary school 3 blocks away (when that time comes) and a brand new high school.
• House was a former model row home with TONS of upgrades (tile, cabinets, built-ins, window coverings, etc)
• Tons of storage space
• Because of the layout, we won’t have to buy hardly any furniture at all.

I could go on and on. But, with the old saying, a picture is worth a thousand words. Let’s make with the pictures.

Other details, the location of the house is in Paramount Subdivision, off Chinden and Meridian road (google map). It will be a bit more of a commute for us both, but it is a straight shot up and down Chinden Blvd, and we don’t have to get anywhere NEAR the freeway which is a good thing.

We close on May 16th.

We are also planning to rent out our current house, which we could get $200-$300 more in rent than the mortgage is. That is solid. This place is so rentable, its not even funny. If you know of anyone who wants a great place, send them our way.

Listen up folks… this is a great deal. We are VERY excited! You’re all invited to numerous BBQ’s this summer where we can hit the pool to cool off, then put my… ok… our gourmet kitchen to good use.

If you have questions, don’t hesitate to ask! Not sure when we can get all of you out there to take a gander, but we’ll try. It might end up being closing day.

Onward and upward!