home, home on the...home is where the...there's no place like...a house?
amy and i have been looking at buying a house for a little while now. we're both tired of wasting money on rent, and in this market why shouldn't we be looking to buy? we have to stay in memphis for at least five years anyways (aesthetics licensure requires five years of work to gain reciprocity in most other states) we figure it wouldn't be a bad investment.

of course we have space requirements. the two bedroom apartment we're in now is large, but it's still a little limiting for all of our stuff (yes, we are trying to thin things out, but there's a lot of furniture that gets in the way, too). since i'm trying to delve deeper into my photography, a studio space like the one we have currently (the extra bedroom) is a must have. i'd also love to have room for a darkroom. we have a california king size bed and another bed, queen size, in storage. we don't mind getting rid of the king and using the queen (believe me, what the queen lacks in size it makes up for in comfort). and now that we cook a lot at home, we both want a bigger kitchen and room to entertain.

so we've been looking all summer long. if any of you have been looking for a house as well, you know the market is wide open (ok, at least it is in memphis), so there's a lot of choices. we put a price cap at $140k and stuck to the midtown area. amy's mom gave us a $10k loan for a down payment (not huge but a big help nonetheless), and amy's grandma is our agent (she works for crye-leike). so we're all set.

and we found something! funny thing was, it was the first house we looked at. i dropped a friend off at a house across the street, saw the sign, grabbed the info sheet and showed it to amy. we set up a walk through and were immediately sold. so was amy's grandma. as soon as we were back in the car together she asked us if we wanted to make an offer. and we did--$130k. the house was listed for $144.9k, so we were expecting a counter. we got a counter of $!40k, within our budget, but we were advised to hold off for a bit.

we looked at a few other houses, one that was really nice and in a great area and in the right price range, but it was a little small. of all the other houses we looked at it was the best, though. still, nothing was better than that first house. we wanted to wait till it had been on the market a little longer so that the owner might change their mind a little on the sale price. then we got word from grandma that the lady had decided to take the house off the market and rent it out. grandma talked to the lady about selling again. she said she wouldn't go lower than $137k if she were going to pay $3000 of the closing costs (part of our original offer). She'd be willing to go to $134k if we paid all the closing costs. we thought it over and....

WE SIGNED THE CONTRACT TODAY!

here is the house, for the curious. we have a house! well, assuming the closing goes well, and we don't see any reason it shouldn't. it's like we're mmmm, um, mmmmmm, uh, maaaa, yeah, whatever. we're happy!