House Hunting: It’s so much worse than I thought

My boyfriend and I have taken the plunge and decided to buy a house together……YAY!!!! Our monthly rent payments will now go toward mortgage payments and we can do whatever we want decoration wise to the house and really take care of our house and have pride in it, and of course get to see each other every day (we currently live an hour apart). What they don’t tell you is how stressful home buying is and that it can really test your patience and possibly your relationship.

First things first, we are both adamant about not only sticking to our budget but trying to be as far under it as possible. We agree 100% on this which is wonderful. What we don’t agree on is patience and mind over emotional. I do not have patience, I try soooo hard then 5 minutes goes by and I am frustrated and he is drag his feet McGee so we are polar opposites. I understand that buying a home is a HUGE step but at some point you have to bite the bullet, no house is going to be perfect (especially not in our price range) and you can never guarantee that something wont go wrong the day after you buy it, the week after, 6 months after and so on.

I like to think that on this we are balancing each other, I am nudging him forward a little faster and he is reigning me in so I don’t sign papers on day 1.

Mind over emotional……….The 2nd house we saw I was in love. It was cute and charming and on some land and almost 90 years old which brings a whole new set of fun things to deal with, and in a rural area which has much less guidelines on bringing things up to code. All in all I still love this house, it would require a little work but it has charm and character and is on the lower end of our budget, a total win right???? He doesn’t think so. All he can see is the work that needs to go into it and I would sign the papers today if I could. So once again we are balancing each other.

The other joy we are facing is that months ago when we were still deciding if we were staying in Oregon or going and if we would buy or rent I told my roommates I would be out by the end of January, now here we are in November with limited time and options. This is also causing me to feel a little bit resentful toward my love, he does not have this time constraint so I don’t think he feels this time pressure as much as I do, which means his dragging his feet, examine everything from every angle is driving me more mad than usual. Breath in, breath out.

And that is just the interpersonal issues! Now factor in the actual houses themselves! More than half of which are sold for cash only because there is so much work to do on them, or the ones that are so gross I am not sure we could even live in them while we slowly fixed them up. It is maddening. Buying houses is maddening, I have a new respect for people who flip houses and don’t know how you don’t all have ulcers; on the other hand I hate you all a little bit because you buy the half way decent ones in our price range, flip them and sell them for 50-100k more and now I can’t afford anything.

I just need to remember patience, not to take my frustrations out on my partner and to pray we find the right house in time.