On the Hunt

As if things aren’t crazy enough for us already this year with job changes, extracurricular activities, travel plans and more, Brandon and I added another (huge) activity to our days: house hunting. That’s right, BrandAnna is finally ready to make the move and dive into home ownership!

We’ve been living in our tiny 2/1 in College Park for just a bit more than three years and while we have loved the charm and location of our little place we are ready for something new – something that will be “ours.” We decided we still want to stay in College Park, which is part of the challenge because the area is known for being over-priced and chock full of really old houses that need a lot of extra work.

So far we have looked at a couple houses and are still working toward finding the perfect one for us. While we continue to look, I wanted to share some of the ways I’ve been staying organized and getting inspired for our new house!

I am a list maker. It’s one of the things I have learned to love about myself, I seriously make a list for just about everything. A couple of years ago I found a fabulous holiday shopping Excel template through Microsoft Office online and it started to make me wonder … what other fun templates can I find on the Internet? Well, it turns out they have a myriad of new-home-related Excel sheets in their gallery for everything from house cleaning checklists to refinancing calculators. I found a nifty mortgage payment estimator worksheet that has helped us create a budget and get a good idea of what we can expect for monthly payments. After we plugged in our numbers, we used it to create a price range for our house hunting efforts and when we met with our mortgage broker to iron out all the details, he let us know that we were right on track with a realistic budget.

After we had our budget in place, it was time to start looking for houses! I had heard a lot about Zillow.com and Realtor.com, and while I still use both of those a lot as far as researching houses, a friend from work (and fellow house hunter) told me about MyFloridaHomesMLS.com. A lot of times, other sites aren’t updated as much, but this one always has a better showing of what’s out there as well as more details and pictures. You can enter in your specifics as far as price range, number of beds/baths, square feet, etc. and then the site will come up with an accurate list of available homes as well as information on the type of sale (traditional, short sale, bank-owned) which is sometimes hard to find out right away on the other sites. For us, this website has been a huge help – I started looking in our area early in order to get a feel of the real estate activity in College Park.

When I was planning our wedding, The Knot was my go-to place to find anything and everything bridal-related. Now that we have been married for a few years, the next step as far as The Knot is concerned was moving over to The Nest. I’ve been browsing around this site for a couple of years and can always count on it for useful tips on a bunch of different things like party hosting, exercising, decorating and of course, buying a house! The thing I like so much about The Nest is that it has a lot of articles as well as questions and answers concerning all sorts of different home-buying experiences. When you first start out looking for a house there are so many different factors that you never even thought about, but The Nest articles explain everything in simple terms and even provides downloadable checklists and forms to help you get started and stay organized.

I hope to have a house update sooner rather than later, but in the mean time I am enjoying my research and planning for our potential new home!

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Blog Report: Young House Love (YoungHouseLove.com)

Another place I’ve found a lot of new-home ideas has been the blog Young House Love. The couple that runs this blog is truly an inspiration. They are the type of people that see the potential in a home and work hard to make it their own.

Brandon and I are looking for something that we can mold into the perfect space for us. We aren’t worried about having to do some work (although we aren’t looking to do a complete overhaul) and getting rid of some of our old stuff in order to make our new home everything we want.

This blog is a huge help because it has a ton of photos and even videos that the couple created to help you get through any renovation or design project you may tackle. And I love their projects gallery which is set up by category so it’s easy to find the things you are looking for – or just browse.