So, we’re back in the market and now (kinda) shopping for our third house. I said we’d never own another house unless we were staying there for a looooong time – I really have no idea if that’s the case now. I do know I’m ready to stop living in someone else’s house and the rental market here is absolutely mad. There are so many people moving to this city that we’ll actually get much more for our money if we take up a mortgage. The housing market is robust enough that I’m not worried about the bottom falling out, so why not spend a half million dollars on a house?!

We’ve signed a six month lease that’ll take us through July, but we’re pretty dead set on buying a place instead of renewing the lease again. We’ll wait a month or two for the right place; we don’t want to sign another long term lease. We’ve been doing open houses the last month or two just to keep up with the market. It looks like  inventory is just ramping up after the winter, but houses are still going within a few days. We’ll be ready to move when we find the right place, however we’ll need to wait until May/June for some stock vests to take us out of PMI territory.

Perhaps the pent up buyers’ desire will equalize after a month or two and it won’t end up like the insanity we were all too familiar with back east.  The goods news is things are no where close to what they were/are there. We could never afford to live inside the Beltway there; here we’ll (hopefully) be in an up-and-coming neighborhood well within city limits… and close to public transportation. No matter how it happens, it’ll be a carnival ride for sure.

The bottom line is this is a sign we’re putting roots down in our new city – something to be celebrated.