House Hell, Part 2

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Where was I? Yes, when last we left, we were attempting to buy a home in one of the most expensive cities in the country (I mean, I'll compare Princeton prices with like a penthouse in Soho, and the penthouse in Soho will be more reasonable). Okay, so we bid on this other house, above asking price as we were advised to do, and the guy accepted our offer. Just to back up a little for those of you who haven't purchased property in a while, you can bid on a house, but you first have to be pre-approved for a mortgage, just so that nothing crazy happens later, like you find out you can't afford it.

We were so excited to have the house! It was adorable--two huge bedrooms with slanting ceilings upstairs and a bathroom there too, then another bedroom with an on-suite bathroom, and a square sun room and decent living room, kitchen and dining area. The basement was clean and dry with high ceilings and the appliances were good (all I cared about was that the refrigerator had a water system in it--that's my idea of luxury). We had the inspection--the second inspection of our house-buying adventure and then we had radon testing, and all came out okay. The inspector was the same guy we had for the other property and he agreed that this house was in much better shape. He found some leaks, but said it was sound overall.

This is not the layout of any of the houses we looked at. 

What we didn't realize is that, in Mercer County, if the house is sold above a certain amount, you have to put down 20% or you will have to pay mortgage insurance, which is like an extra $150 or whatever a month. The way the mortgage folks tell you about it is funny---they don't say, "You'll have to pay PMI for the next 5 years."  They say, "You'll pay PMI for 60 months." Sixty months doesn't sound bad at first.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. So, we got the house, and we had the inspection and we started wanting to tell Luke about it, because he was worried about having to change schools. We had these elaborate plans for how we were going to reveal it to him, but we were also cautious because we hadn't yet sealed the deal with the mortgage or gone to the closing.

Have to run. Stay tuned for the rest...


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