Eureka! And then what?

Finding a house that suited our needs (and our budget) proved to be the a lot easier said than done. We started with a price we were willing to pay, upped it when we started to get desperate and then, after nearly a year of looking, decided that we were sticking to our guns or not buying a home at all.

Our search began in January of '06. By that December, two offers and many, many houses and neighborhoods later, we still hadn't found what we were looking for despite the fact that the housing market was oversaturated and affordable houses were springing up on the MLS a few times a day. Problem was, we couldn't call about them fast enough. Someone was always a step ahead of us with a pending offer. This — paired with the fact that we were sick and tired of searching without finding — brought us very close to calling it quits.

But on a night when I was taking Phil to check out a reasonably priced fixer-upper I'd already seen, one that seemed like it had real potential, I received an e-mail about a brand new listing. The price was right, the square footage was high, and it was owned by an out-of-state bank — seemingly too good to be true, as we assumed this meant less chance of a bidding war. So we dropped by, climbed in through an unlocked window and took a look around.A brief once-over in the murky, dank interior got us unreasonably excited.

In the light of the following day, we walked around it again with our real estate agent.

Long stretches of gray, animal-stained carpeting with a corresponding pungent smell, walls dark with dirt and a child's scribbled handwriting, dog-chewed doorknobs and door frames, the cheapest fans in town — all cosmetic issues we were confident we could tackle. The two bathrooms were relatively clean and recently remodeled, the kitchen was less recently fixed up but still in fairly good condition, the ceilings were high and made the place feel big, bright and airy, the three bedrooms needed very little work, the front yard was thankfully small and boasted a tangerine tree, and the back yard was spacious and surrounded by a tall wood fence that blocked out prying eyes. We were in love.

We put in an offer that very same day.

There's a lot of paperwork and annoying tasks involved in the actual home-buying process. Every time you make an offer, or a counter-offer, you have to fill out and sign a new form. Soon after we put in our bid, we had to make an "earnest money" deposit —worth a small percent of the asking price — in an escrow (holding) account to prove to the bank we were serious.

Then the bank's real estate agent contacted us to let us know that although we were the first people to make a offer, ours was the lowest and did we want to increase it? We filled out more paperwork with our offer raised to the list price and faxed it to his office. A few weeks later we were informed that, for all intents and purposes, the house was ours.

Because the house was built in 1925 and located in Florida, we could only get approved for one kind of insurance, the government-created Citizens. This meant that it didn't really matter who we got it from as ii would pretty much be the same price all around. More paperwork followed.

But then came the inspections. (Cue ominous music.) As with any homebuyer, in order to get approved for house insurance and uncover any potential problems, we had to pay a licensed inspector to come out and examine everything and record his observations in a detailed, many-page report. We could only hope that the most expensive renovations — roof, plumbing, mold, electricity — were avoidable. The roof was relatively new, the plumbing was fine, the suspicious brown spot on the hallway was a stain from an A/C leak ceiling and not mold — but the electricity had only been partially updated and the house still had some knob and tube wiring. As we couldn't get insured with this "high risk of fire" issue, we shopped around for an electrician to fix it by our closing date.

The first estimate was $4,000, which almost ended it altogether and initiated a few days worth of back and forth with the bank (more paperwork). Essentially, we were told that two other families were waiting in the wings and it wasn't a problem for them if we didn't want to buy the house. So we found another electrician, who took two weeks to do nine hours of work but charged us $950 and signed the necessary paperwork we needed to fax to the insurance company — on the day it was due.

My credit was good enough that we were approved for a low-interest, 30-year fixed loan pretty early on in the process. My husband and I also had enough funds saved that a 20 percent down-payment wasn't out of the question and would keep us from having to buy Private Mortgage Insurance, which lenders require for loans that are more than 80 percent of the home's value.

We put our down-payment money into the escrow account with our earnest money, and applied and were approved for a second loan so we could keep some cash for renovations while still avoiding PMI. We also got the bank to pay for all the closing costs, roughly $5,000, and among the fees were payments to both the realtors (6 percent, split in half), settlement charges, and city and county taxes. We also had to pay for our insurance through the year and for property taxes in the amount that the previous owner paid, an amount that would increase when the house was re-assessed the following November.

Like most mortgages, my final monthly payment included money that went into an escrow account that would eventually be emptied by the mortgage company to pay for property taxes and insurance.

Then came the daunting stack of paperwork. I had to sign three copies of everything, about a half-hour task, and have one sent to the title company, which needed proof of purchase before sending us our title. We also made sure to complete and send out the forms for a homestead exemption, which protects first-time home buyers from creditors, circumstances arising from death, and, most importantly, from a more than 3 percent annual increase on our property taxes.

Then came getting the house ready for move-in. Initially, we'd planned on refinishing the heart-of-pine floors beneath the carpeting, but an $8,000 estimate and no guarantee on the outcome (due to much termite damage and stains) versus a $5,000 estimate for brand new floors helped us to make a decision pretty quickly. After the floors were installed, we wiped away all the wood dust, thoroughly cleaned and sanitized everything, applied several coats of primer and paint to every room, and moved in all our stuff.

There was a cabinet full of Pyrex dishes and other random cookwear in one of the big kitchen cabinets; in the backyard shed, gardening tools, a rake, a shovel and other randomness we didn't have to buy; and hanging around outside, a stray cat with chocolate point coloring, big blue eyes and a never-ending purr. We named him Rutherford the Brave, started feeding him and eventually fell in love and took responsibility for him. He is now fat, neutered and content to spend rainy days and most evenings inside the house with us.

Though our furniture situation was bleak — a broke-down couch, a large and small television, a bed, various small tables, a few dressers, and a few bookcases — the stuff we needed came to us as hand-me-downs. A dining room table, a couch and loveseat, a futon for the middle room, a bed for the back, two more dressers, my dad's enormous vintage speakers, a picnic table for the backyard and a variety of pots and pans.

The refrigerator that came with the house was in great condition, but the dishwasher didn't work. The stove worked, but the handle on the oven was broken and set to "on," and the estimate we got to fix it was not much less than it would cost to buy a new one. So we bought a barbeque grill instead and spent five months grilling all of our meals until Grandpa funded a new dishwasher, which we bought with a gas stove for a great deal. And we recently inherited my dad's double-door fridge and sold our own.

Being a homeowner does have its down sides. The infamous tent city was only a block away and still in operation when we moved in. My neighbors are less intrusive, but they tend to be rather gossipy and we had to deal with some awkwardness when one of them tried to dupe us into paying him for lawn work we didn't ask him to do. An outdoor flea infestation got bad enough that we had to call pest control to spray, and we had to call on them again this year to tent our house when the first rain came and termites began leaving their wings everywhere. A vicious pit bull got loose and terrorized the neighborhood, killing a pet cat before it was put down by the police. And most recently, we had to deal with a more than $200 increase in our mortgage payments for the rest of the year due to an escrow shortage — the escrow money didn't cover our property tax increase and the insurance, so the mortgage company had to cover the costs, which meant my husband and I had to pay them back before we could start paying into the escrow again. We console ourselves with the fact that the payments will go down again next year.

But overall, I am a satisfied homeowner and a relieved one, too. The numerous years of enduring all manner of apartment living has given me perspective. I love, love the cozy home I've made with my husband.

We can blast the stereo so loud that it rattles the glasses in the kitchen cabinets, sing along to the music with boisterous abandon, dance with happy-heavy feet, barbecue in the backyard, have loud parties with dozens of our friends, hire a band to play in the front room. We are the dictators of our domain and enjoy all of the freedom that comes with it.

Read why Leilani decided to take the home-owning plunge in this story about her colorful apartment neighbors.

This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 5, 2008.