That’s right — we bought a house!

It’s a good-sized 2,000+ sq. ft. two story home in Austin, Texas. We closed a few days ago, and the bank transferred the funds the same day — the transferring of the money is what finalized it in my mind. You can sign all kinds of papers, but until the money changes hands, it ain’t real.

Wow … talk about a huge, life-changing event. And to say that just 14 months ago we were in Michigan renting a 2-bedroom dugout, barely making ends meet …

I can talk forever about all exciting challenges we’ve encountered when shopping for our house. However, I have a few key takeaway points:

• Do research. Do it non-stop for weeks, in a dedicated, methodical fashion. I’m hearing it used to be that you would put all kinds of faith in your realtor and have him/her find you a home because of the tools only they had access to as realtors. Not any more — between MLS searches, GPS, Google Earth, and digital imaging, you can be your own data analyst AND a realtor. We methodically combed through the REMAX site, punches our “likes” and “maybes” into our GPS unit, sorted listings by the MLS area, then drove around, took pictures, geotargeted them with Picasa, and discussed.
• Found your perfect house? Buy it! We got lucky — we did not find a house we loved only to have somebody else write an offer on it, but a bunch of people we know had that happen to them. A house is not a car — no two houses are identical. Even if two identical houses are sitting next to each other, one could be closer to the main (and noisy) road, and therefore, be valued less. Or the other one could have had cleaner owners — the point is, you need to shop around, but the moment you find something that makes you feel like “this is it”, write an offer.
• Don’t neglect the details. Sure, during the walkthrough it may seems like having the laundry room in the kitchen is no big deal, but you need to visualize yourself dodging salsa-chopping family members while running around with baskets full of towels, and realize that you need to rethink your opinion.
• Take care of paperwork as soon as humanly possible. Large bureaucracies (like banks and big real estate firms) are still largely inefficient. They use fax machines A LOT, and tend to not respond to voice mails. Therefore, DO follow up, DO be annoying, DO keep paper and electronic copies of everything you send out, DO create a tracking sheet of everything you send out. Trust me, being polite, persistent, and yes, annoying, pays off due to the whole “squeaky wheel” phenomenon.

That’s really it … time to paint, remodel, refloor, recarpet, tile, clean, etc, etc …