On Houses

Teremok in Talashkino

Foter.com / CC BY-SA

Nathan and I talk about a lot of things. Being self-employed and working at home together means a ton of face-time with each other. Short of talking to our dogs and cat, we’ve only got each other for 90% of our awake hours so we have quite a bit of silence to fill. And most of our conversations go the span of weeks or months because we get sidetracked by work, only to resume it later with “weren’t we talking about _ last week and never really finished?”

This weekend one of those conversations happened.

Last week we talked about how Green Bay is really growing into a city we could see ourselves living in longer than just a few months until we figured out our next move. It’s become much more of a fit for us, both for our personal lives and our business life. Financially, personally, and economically – it’s a good fit. It’s not our dream location by any means. There aren’t miles upon miles of sandy beaches or sprawling blue ocean, but that beautiful scenery comes with a huge downfall for our business right now. The laws in place prevent us from living in Florida and running our businesses as home business, and the cost of living in California is too much for us to bare right now. When neither one of us want to move to a place that we can’t enjoy because we’re spending too much time working to afford it, it loses it’s appeal.

By the end of the conversation, Nathan had made a simple yet innocent statement. He said something along the lines of: “It makes it easier to consider buying a house here.”

And it stuck with me all week. I thought about it as we drove around, picking apart things I liked and disliked about the houses we drove past. I thought about it as I did laundry in our dimly lit basement. I thought about it while we bumped each other trying to squeeze through our narrow, walk-through kitchen every day. The more I thought about it, the more I craved it. The more I wanted a place of our own and the more I felt like it was my next step. Even more so, our next step as a family.

So I finally asked how serious he was. And he was as serious as I was. Next thing I knew, we were looking at houses and talking about all of the things we wanted in a house. We’re no where close to being ready to buy, but we’re hoping that the Winter months will be enough time for us to figure out what we can afford, what we want, and where we want to be. Then hopefully come Spring, we’d be ready to start truly looking (more than just the window-shopping I’ve started to do with every spare minute.)

I can’t even begin to explain how excited and nervous I am about this!

Any tips for a first-time home buyer?

All advice is appreciated!