Ben’s Blog

As promised, I took some pictures Wednesday when I went to meet the home inspector. You can see them here. I’ve included a few here for those of you that don’t care to see all of them. As I was looking through the pictures I realized I didn’t get a good shot of the right side of the house, or a shot that shows the entire back yard.

As you’ll notice, there are a few things that need to be fixed or tidied up before we move in. This includes refinishing the kitchen cabinets, fixing or replacing the cracked tiles in the kitchen, and painting the front door. Cassie wants to do some painting too. Also, as soon as I we close I want to go ahead and get some more trees in the ground. We’re running out of prime tree planting season.

As for the home inspection, I haven’t gotten the report from the home inspector, but last time I spoke to him (about two hours into the inspection) he said he hadn’t found any major issues.

It occurred to me while I was organizing the pictures that Cassie and I haven’t shared a bathroom in about six years, since we moved out of our first apartment. Of course, given the size of the master bathroom, that shouldn’t be a problem.

I’m sure I’ll be posting much more about the house.

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Cassie and I started house hunting last week, made an offer yesterday afternoon, and came to an agreement with the seller earlier this evening. We are quite excited about the prospect of being “homeowners.”

The house is in the South Oaks subdivision, which is about half a mile south of where we live now. It has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and is a little over 1900 square feet. It sits on a 0.96 acre lot on a cul-de-sac, at the edge of the subdivision. The fenced-in backyard is huge, and the lot extends well into the wooded area behind the fence.

There are currently over 1,500 properties on the market in the Oxford area. However, due to our requirements and budget, our options were relatively limited. Firstly, we wanted the house to be in the Oxford School District. We want the kids to go to Oxford city schools (more on that later).

Secondly, we wanted a relatively large yard with some trees. When we began our search we defined “relatively large” as half an acre. We did much better with the yard that I could have ever expected.

On the other hand, we were hoping to get a four bedroom house, or at least three bedrooms and a bonus room. There were a few of those in our price range, but there was always something else “wrong” with them. Three bedrooms is a little on the tight side for us, but it’ll be fine. We plan on moving up in house in five or six years anyway.

The house was originally put on the market in August. The seller dropped the price 7.2% in October, and the price we agreed on was 5.3% below the reduced price. The price we agreed on was a lot less than we initially planned on spending. As our house hunt moved along we decided we’d prefer to spend less on a house and have a little more surplus income. I’m very happy with that decision, and I’m not sure I would have been so relaxed through the whole process if we hadn’t come to that conclusion early on.

Our contract states that we’ll close on or before April 15th, and we plan on being moved in by the end of April. There’s a lot to do between now and then. The first step is a home inspection. I’m sure you’ll be hearing much more about the house.