House Buying

[jennythereader]

A couple of questions for my friends who own houses:

How long did it take you to go from "I'm (or we're) going to start looking" to "thank goodness, we're (or I'm) all moved in"?

How much of that time was spent finding the house, and how much of it was spent jumping through hoops for the bank?

Comments

[stefka.livejournal.com]

From the first time it crossed my mind, to the time I closed and moved in, was a year almost to the DAY.

I realized in February that this was something that maybe I could do, and I did some desultory looking on my own (and having a knowledgeable friend come along to give me advice). Eventually I hooked up with a real estate agent and got into the USDA first time homebuyers' program, which preapproved me for a mortgage, at which point things got serious because I knew what price to shoot for. In the middle of all this, my housemate got a new job and left the state. I couldn't afford to rent the house we were in by myself, but a colleague offered me her spare room on a long-term temporary basis. Turned out to be a little under six months.

At least one or two houses got bid-and-bought "out from under me" -- I had an appointment to go look at a house, and the house got sold. But I looked at several, and closed on a Friday before work. I took over a ceremonial first load of stuff in my car. The next day, with the help of several friends with large vehicles, I got everything out of the room in a friend's house where I'd been staying and out of my storage unit, and slept in my own house that night.