House hunting

So, my boyfriend and I are looking into homes.. why? you may ask. We did the Math,research and some caliding of differences and came up to buying a house is the best way to go right now.

The step we took into making our first decision is:

1 .  Look into renting, How much we would have to pay in rent,what we would have to pay in  and the total payout between the two.

•   What we found with this was that, renting in our range ran from 600-800 and we would only get a bed and a bath. we wouldn't have to pay water/sewage but would have to pay everything else separately. 
• What we could do: live there
• What we cant do: Paint rooms,long term stay

2. Look into condos/town home, These seems a little more stable but when we go to sell we will get less then what we put in.

•  What we found with going this way was that, renting was now between 800- and over 1,000 which was way to much for us to do.
• what we could do: paint rooms,stay longer
• What we cant do: change the outside of the condo(paint outside,change/put alot in the backyard) strict rules in certain condo/town home areas.

3. Look into owning a home, sounds like a lot of responsibility,money,time

• What we could do: Paint,change,redo,live long term
• What we cant do: break laws?

So, now that we broke down the cost and made a final decision now its .. What do we do now??

We picked a range from where we could live Vs. where we don't want to live, based on jobs.
i live an hour away from my job and he live an half and hour from him so we wanted to break that in half.

 Next, we had to figure out what kind of loans are out there that would work best for us.

• FHA (Federal Housing Administration) loan: Which is nice is nice because they can fund us up 96.9% and all we would have to pay is  3%  rather then 20+ % plus minium to no down payment,

                  The caught is that we would have to only have USDA (United States Department of Agriculture)which there will be only positive guildlines, like painting the house, keeping it look nice,mow the lawn,etc.
       The biggest caught all about this loan/USDA approved homes is that it cant be in cuties(York, Harrisburg,  etc) which we thought it might be a problem, be we loved the idea of not being in a city.

• Bank Loans: Going threw a fixed rate but still having to pay 20+% and the closing cost

We picked to go the USDA loan root, they help a lot with first home owners.

Now! the fun begins actually finding a home!

The realitor is now helping us look for homes!

... to be continued!