House Hunting {1}

What have we been up to?

We have been house hunting!

We are paying almost another house payment in utilities right now. There are other small reasons such as our leaking basement, home layout, not enough yard, too close to other homes, our nasty neighbor and I could go on. So of course being young and eager Kale and I decided to start looking for a new house.

For weeks we have gone round and round about what we plan on doing.

option 1: Buying a new house ( no remodeling etc required) 

option 2: Buying an older house that we could remodel and make our own but still have that solid structure with full basement (a lot of new homes around here are not built very well! Mostly Jago manufactured homes that fall apart within 10 years usually in neighborhoods where all the houses look the same).

option 3: purchasing land and building 

We have spent most nights this last few weeks just discussing all the financial aspects, time, money, and all the different scenarios of selling our current home and purchasing a new one.

We have a great realtor that we have been working with. We have so far viewed 6 homes.

BUT

After a LONG debate on every little aspect of this house hunting escapade we have started...We have decided to HIT THE BRAKES!

Why?

1.} Phone calls to family members who are older and wiser. 

2.} We LOVE the home we are currently in except for a few things that we can live with for now. Don't want to sell just yet.

3.} What effect will remodeling a home right now have on our kids? They really need us and we have made a few commitments to them. Colten and Tyler are about to start their baseball season this year (ends in June). If we are ripping out kitchens and bathrooms we aren't going to be able to give them this time.

4.} Kale found a link from our Electric company just the other day. They will come in and do this complete inspection with door blowers and crazy stuff I've personally never seen before. They tell you what you can do to get your home to be more energy efficient. This might be what we've needed all along. This could get pricey but it will keep us at bay for jumping into a new home right now.

5.} I just don't think we are ready to sell and purchase a new home just yet. We promised each other that we would take our time the next home we buy. I intend on keeping that in Kale's mind and vice versa. It takes two to make this decision so we are working on keeping each other in line as far as this whole process is concerned.

RIGHT NOW:

Right now we have decided to stay in our current home.

Get Vectren in to do the home efficiency testing. 

See about fixing the problems outlined by Vectren (if the cost is worth it)

Enjoy being in our home :)

This brings back the memories of when we purchased our first home :)

Our boys were so little :)

 We aren't sure yet what the plan will be but we have all the time in the world to enjoy our current home and kiddos. We also have plenty of time to think and plan.

Love,

The Shank Family