Avenue Q and The House Hunt Continues...

Thought I would start this post by talking about Avenue Q, for those who dont know Avenue Q is a tony award winning musical that is basically Seasame Street for adults. I had found out about it a few years ago when it was off-broadway in an Entertainment Weekly article. I found the soundtrack and purchased it from the song titles alone(classics like "if you were gay..." and "Everyones a little bit racist" and my favorite "The Internet...is for Porn). Well we finally got the chance to see it live as it came to Atlanta this week. The show was simply outstanding its done with a mix of live actors and puppets (to give it the seasame street feel) and after a short while you dont even notice the puppeteers and just focus on the puppets themselves. The story is actually quite good it focus's on Princeton the newest arrival on Avenue Q trying to find his purpose in life and getting involved with the other citizens of the block the superintendent Gary Coleman (yes THAT Gary Coleman), Christmas Eve (a Japanese Therapist with no clients) Her finace Brian (a jobless stand up comic), Rod and Nicky (a Bert and Ernie type pair with Nicky being the slob and Rod the in the closet Republican investment banker) Trekkie Monster (the internet porn addict) and Kate Monster (the cute kindergarten teaching assistant who cant seem to get a boyfriend) Princeton and Kate hit it off and begin to date while Princeton is still searching for his purpose and this leads to one of the most outragesly funny things I think I have ever seen...after the whole groups goes out to a bar to see a new singer (a rather gifted (in the chest anyway) singer aptly named Lucy the Slut) Princeton and Kate wind up getting totally wasted (thanks to another highlight of the show The Bad Idea Bears) and wind up back in Kates apartment while during a song sung by Gary called "you can be loud as the hell you want" they engage in some serious puppet on puppet action...it was so funny it nearly had me falling out of my chair. Sam and I truly loved the show and would recomend it for those with an open mind LOL.

On the housing front after some discussion and thinking we have decided that Bridgetowne may not be our best bet. After we started looking closer at the house to get the upgrades we would want we might wind up closer to a 215,000 price tag wich might stretch us farther than we want to go. So we met with the realtor on thursday and really liked her she pulled some listings for us in Woodstock and Cumming that fit our needs and were in our pricerange and we went through and picked out the ones that we liked we came up with close to 20, so this saturday we are going out with her to try and look at as many of them as we can. Most of them are priced less than 200 so I really think we may be getting the most out of our money on a resale, the nice thing is what we save on the house we can always put to upgrades or rennovations. We also talked with the mortgage lender that we got connected to thru Sam's coworker, We already got pre-qualified and found out that we really do have an awesome credit score wich really made me feel good. On the apartment front we found out that in order to get out early we would have to buy out basically by giving 60 days notice and paying a month and a half worth of rent. But in talking to the realtor we may be looking at around August for closing so we may not need to get out early we will just have to see how that plays out. Hopefully we find something that we will really fall in love with and can get a good deal on it really is a great market for buyers right now so we are looking at a good time.

House Hunt Part II

Well we went and looked at Bridgetowne today and absolutely loved it, The sales agent was extremely nice and showed us a few different plans and called their mortgage broker to get an idea of what we might be looking at payment wise. The floor plan that we liked (4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths) was base priced around 205,000 and when the ran the payments we found it was something we probably could get into. They have an option called a 2/1 buydown which keeps your payment lower the first year, and then a little more the second year, and then you get your locked in payment in the third year. Its a nice way of easing you into getting used to a house payment as opposed to rent and its not an ARM which we don't want. We looked at other floor plans but just kept coming back to this one called the Ridgewood (to check out the floor plan click herehttp://www.atreushomes.com/floorplans/bridgetowne/ridgewood.pdf) the time frame we are looking at we would get it custom built for us which is a big plus. The only problem is that our lease on the apartment isn't up until October, and we were looking at more of a July move in date if we have it built and to get it locked in now. After we spent some time at Bridgetowne we drove down the street aways to try and look at other houses in the area, the first community we ran into was much more expensive (starting at 270,00) and the floorplans didn't seem nearly as attractive there was no agent on site so we didn't get much information but it didn't seem like something we were interested in anyway. The other ones we looked at were at the same price range as Bridgetowne but not nearly as convenient. Bridgetowne is very close to the main highway to get to our respective workplaces as well as downtown. This community was way back of the main road. We started by just going to look at the models, as we looked at them they really didn't blow us away like Bridgetowne did as we came out of the first model the agent came over to great us, she showed us the second model and talked a little with us, When she found out we were comparison shopping she quickly mentioned how the best value for our money would be here. After sitting down with her and going over a few things we set off to look at some of the other floor plans that she had open where they were building them. The first thing we noticed was that the floorplans were not nearly as nicely laid out. One that was priced around the same as the Ridgewood was really set up strange with the master and 2 bedrooms on the main level and the a staircase that went up to just a bedroom and bath. I thought that was really weird, it would at least make some sense if it was the master suite up there but it was just a secondary bedroom, not a good use of space at all if you ask me. So as we drove back home went out to dinner we talked about what we liked and didn't like and I really think that this may be our perfect first home. We are meeting with a Realtor this week so I emailed her to let her know that we had looked at this one and to see if working with them to maybe get a better deal was something she could offer, and also to have her pull some similar resale homes in the area so we could compare what we would get for the money. We need to talk with the apartments to see if its possible to get out of our lease early and Sam is going to talk with a co-workers Mom who works in the Mortgage industry to see what she might be able to do for us. So all in all a very productive day, that gave us a lot to think about. I am really excited but also very nervous at the same time, its such a huge step but I think we are ready and I really think we can pull this off and be very happy to have a real place to call home.

Starting the House Hunt...

Well Sam and I have finally decided to truly start looking for a house, neither one of us can take the apartment anymore, from the noisy neighbors to the lack of room it just no longer suits us. Unfortunately neither one of us really has a clue as to what we are doing, I feel slightly overwhelmed. We would love to get into a brand new home but not sure if we can afford it or not. There is a subdivision called Bridgetown a little north of us that we had looked at previously and really liked some of the floor plans they have and it is reasonable as far as price goes so we are going to try and go this weekend and look again, and actually sit down with them and see if we can work it out. If that doesn't work out I think we may need to find an agent to help us out. At first I didn't want to go the agent route thinking that we would have to hire them and it would cost us more that way. However since the market is so horrible right now, the majority of agents will offer their services free to the buyer, its like they are so excited about actually having a buyer they will go out of their way to help you. I actually had one call me already about a listing that I had emailed about, I kind of want to get a better idea of exactly what we want and see if the Bridgetown thing works out before I give them a call back. I am excited and nervous at the same time, I know we will find something that we like and hopefully the process goes smoothly and we can finally have a house to call our home.