Wow, the posts have been few and far between recently... So the biggest news for the moment is that Abby and I are getting towards the end of the process of purchasing our first home. This has been crazy, exciting, nerve-racking and a huge adventure, but through it all we have really had a lot of fun.
Starting with an idea
After talking to many people with a lot more experience than ourselves (my parents, Abby's parents, and friends who have recently moved), when we began the process of looking for a home. The first thing we looked for was not the house, but the
area...
My parents like to remind me of the three most import rules of property investment - location, location, location - and point out that it is equally import in a home, not just an investment property. Learning from their mistakes, their best advice was that even though they have loved all the houses they have lived in, they have missed a little on the locations. To echo this, Abby's sister, Molly, has a friend who recently moved into the general area we had decided we wanted to live. My father-in-law was talking to her only a month after they had moved in and asked how they were liking it. Her answer was sad. She said they
love the house, but really don't like the subdivision they are in.
So we decided to keep this in mind when looking for our first home: houses can be fixed, carpet can be replaced, walls can be painted and yards can be landscaped - but you can't change your neighbours, their houses, the cars parked out front, the traffic flow or where an access road flows.
Starting the Process
Keeping the above in mind, we started a little differently to some people. Not on the Internet, not with a realtor, but on bikes and on foot. We knew we wanted to live fairly close to where we currently rent in the Westminster/
Broomfield area, so we walked around the communities that were close to us.
While walking we took note of the feel or ambiance of the community. We looked at whether they had community facilities (pools, gyms, tennis courts etc) and how high the
HOA fees were. We picked up fliers for any houses for sale in the area and got a general idea of the age/size/cost of the area.
One thing we took notice of, was how the community member took care of their cars, and funnily enough this was one of the BEST indicators of what a community was like! I'm not talking about whether they were expensive or cheap, but whether they were in good condition and well cared for. What we found was that a community with older cars that were in excellent condition ended up being nicer than a community with new/expensive cars that had been neglected a little. Expensive cars that had been cared for only seemed to be in communities way outside our price range - go figure ;)
One of the areas that we looked through was where Molly's friend lived, though we didn't know it at the time. Just going through it I turned to Abby and said that I felt it had a transitional or transient feeling to it. Later when we inspected a house or two there, the Realtor was telling us about the area and said it was almost completely first home buyers, and after a few years they moved out. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing! There is always a market for that area, and houses sell quite often which means it will be good when it is time to move on, but it isn't what Abby and I were looking for. It was also nice to get confirmation that our "get a feel for the neighbourhood" plan was working.
We finally found a subdivision that we really loved. It's called College Hills/
Stratford lakes (they are interchangeable). It's an older subdivision which presents it's own set of challenges, but it has wide quiet streets, no through-traffic, well established landscaping and it back's onto the Big Dry Creek trail and open space. On top of that it is almost halfway between Abby's workplace and mine, and has easy access to some arterial roads.
We'd found where we wanted to live - next came the challenge of finding a house.
OK,
That'll do for this post - more to come later...
