Thinking About Buying a House

C and I have been casually looking at buying a house ever since we've been married for the past two and a half years. I think now is the time to get serious with the $8,000 tax credit for first time home buyers.

I'm glad that we've waited this long to make a large purchase. We could have purchased a place earlier, but since we live in SF, housing here is expensive. We've been squirreling our money in liquid accounts since I never knew when we were going to get serious. We could have made a lot more money in CDs or bonds, but I've been lazy. We have enough for a down payment, now we just need to find a place we like that we can afford. We've waited so long to buy a place since we have not been able to find a place we like that we can afford. In the past I told C that I think there are non-monetary benefits to owning a home, but we just couldn't find a place that was right for us.

The upper limit of what we're willing to pay is probably $800K. I saw a great house that I liked listed for $1.08M. That is way out of our price range, but I was wondering . . .how low can an offer be without offending the sellers? There was just a price reduction and the place has been on the market for 6-8 weeks. C and I are planning on seeing it this weekend and then we'll know if we want to make an offer. There's still a lot more we need to do if we're going to be serious about buying a place, like getting pre-approved. I've been hesitant to do that so far since I don't think we'll start to seriously look until this summer.

I Got the Promotion!

Back in February, I blogged about how to get a raise in a bad economy. I am happy to report that not only did I get a raise, I also got a promotion! Ok, so I actually found out about almost 2 months ago, but I've been super buys with work. While I was very happy to receive both, the raise was substantially less than what I was expecting. My raise was only 6%. While this wouldn't be bad in normal circumstances, this now puts me in the very middle of the pay grade for the position I had before my promotion. Dollar-wise, this is less than what I've received for all of my other promotions (I've moved up pretty quickly at my organization due to my hard work).

Well I'm taking it in stride since my company is going through a lot of organizational issues right now. Most likely we will be bought out within the next few months. In light of the different organizational announcements, I'm not sure if my promotion is a good thing, but I am sure that my lower than normal salary at my position will help me retain my job.