House Hunt

We’re looking for a house. We were planning on building, but have concluded that with the complications of having to survey off land and then mom needing to convince the bank to break it off the property (since it is mortgaged) AND the cost of buidling (would all HAVE to be under $100,000 that were weren’t sure it was the best thing for us to do for our first home. Add that to the gas prices going no where but up and we had little reason to think it was the best thing for us to do.

I am very sad about this because We love living in the country and wanted to raise our children there. BUT in light of all the above we started looking for places that would be closer to where I work and would be in our price range thinking that maybe we’d find something that we could buy and possibly sell later for more $$.

Morgantown is the fastest growing market in the state and houses there are going for ridiculously high prices. Those prices are trickling out to Preston County too though.

So, in this process, we found our DREAM home in Arthurdale. Oh my god we loved it. It was absolutely perfect for us. The location, the size, the lot. Everything.
But, it is about $20,000 out of our price range. We can only go as high as $100,000 and they are asking $119,000. It is very sad. We fell in love HARD with the community and the house when we looked at it.

While at the bank we also found out that we absolutly NEED to get something NOW. They (the West Virginia Housing Development Fund – First Time Homebuyers loan) are changing the guidelines for how they assess your ability to pay for a home and student loans. While we were there the loan officer called the WVHDF and asked whether or not she had to take that into consideration and was told no, but that will change in a matter of weeks. If we fall under that we would never be able to buy a house. seriously. On paper we’d be paying something like $2700/mo. in student loans in addition to everything else.

So we are a little frantic now. We drove around all day Wednesday getting a feeling for the different areas in a 20 mile radius of Morgantown. We found we really didn’t like Fairmont or the way downtown Grafton felt. We did like Arthurdale (of course) and the Blueville section of Grafton of of 119. There wasn’t much appealing (or even in our price) range in Masontown and Reedsville (shockingly some of these crappy houses there are going for $140,000-$150,000).

So we have a couple of agents looking for us. They haven’t come up with anything that I haven’t found on my own though. It’s all online except for most houses for sale by the owners.

Mom asked if we’d want to buy the house and the acres around it (only) and she’d build something. That’s a last ditch effort. I thought once that might be what we’d want to do, but I don’t want to be stuck with that house forever and I feel like if she doesn’t want to sell us the entire property it wouldn’t be worth it. We do want a nicer house and there is SO much that needs to be done to her house – roof, windows, siding, driveway. AND we could never sell it (nor would we want to), so I feel like we’d be locking ourselves in forever if we did that. Besides that, I don’t think it is fair that I’d have to buy that house from mom, but later *IF* my siblings want a place she wouldn’t ask them to buy property from her (though we have never discussed that so I can’t say that for sure). (I know she wants to keep access to the property for them, but that is a non-issue. Of course they would have access to it and could then buy it at the same price or less than I bought it from mom.) We’d also have to get it surveyed anyway and I don’t think the WVHDF will loan for more than 5 acres – the springs are farther than 5 acres from the house I think…not sure. They require that the water source be on those 5 acres. The timing is not on our side for this route anyway. We’d have to get this rolling paperwork-wise within the next few days/weeks and that ain’t gonna happen – school doesn’t let out until June.

So…that may be what we have to explore, but I think I’d rather get something that we can improve, and sell for a profit in the years to come and then build a great place later. OR find a way to buy a house in Artherdale and live there forever.

=)