Spring 2005
We Buy Our First House
We had lived in our apartment for almost three years, and probably would have stayed longer if it hadn't been for the drug dealer who moved in next door. But when it's time to go, it's time go. So we went.
We enrolled in a month long first-time homebuyers class, which was really helpful in understanding the process. It also allowed us to find a couple different pots of money available to first-time homebuyers. We looked at maybe 20 houses with our realtor all over the Asheville area, and eventually found it one day while we were riding our bikes around town.
Looking back, I still can't believe we got a loan to buy a house at that time in our lives. We were both broke and in graduate school. Our combined income must have been under $20,000 a year. But I guess we looked trustworthy, because the bank said, "sure, take this money....we don't need it!" So we took it.
We love our house! We don't want to be in it forever, but it's been perfect for what we need now. We've done a lot of work on it ourselves, which is very rewarding. Most of that work has stopped with the arrival of Nathaniel, but I guess that's to be expected.