We Just Bought a House!

This may come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog, but an opportunity has arisen that my wife and I just couldn't pass up - we just bought a house!

We had long planned to move to Northern California and will be doing so next month.

But we're not gonna be renters - we're gonna be homeowners again!

We got a terrific deal on a new home priced well below last year's price - only $3,000 a month.

We didn't really think we could afford it because both of us just quit our jobs, but the loan guy said, "No problem".

As many of you already know, we've been renting here in Southern California for a while now and hadn't planned to purchase anything until all this subprime, Alt-A, no-doc, low-doc, negative-amortization, no-money down, 40 year, piggy-back lending mess had sorted itself out.

But, our realtor told us that Alan Greenspan called the bottom in the housing market last December, which would put us smack in the middle of a rebound right about now.

Our realtor also told us that lending standards are being tightened and that interest rates might be going back up, so we'd better act now while prices and interest rates are still low.

The peak spring-summer real estate sales season is directly ahead and this is sure to be a good year - at least that's what the chief economist at the National Association of Realtors said.

What's his name? Dave Lereah? He should know - he's an economist.

We found a perfect home on a lake that, while some might think it to be too big for just the two of us, we think we can grow into it.

We'll have a couple of extra rooms to fill, but buying all that extra furniture on easy credit should be good for the local economy and it'll be fun too.

Speaking of easy credit, it's pretty amazing what they do with home financing today. You see it's all based on the low monthly payment.

In fact my wife and I joked after we signed the papers, "Do you even remember what the sales price was? The place has to be worth more than $3,000 a month!"

The mortgage guy said something about a "balloon adjusting" or something like that, but to be honest, we weren't really paying attention by then - look at this place! It's gorgeous!

At one point we were concerned that maybe home prices might go down further, but have you seen how the population is growing in California?

People have to live somewhere.

That's what they said when we hesitated last week.

Another buyer was apparently interested in the place and it was "either act now or forget about it".

So we acted.

Thank god we don't have to throw away any more money on rent.

What a waste that was. This is really gonna work out well.