new digs.

[Gypsiyee]

so we went up to NC this weekend to look at houses and ended up loving one, put an offer in on it and now we're under contract and it looks like we'll be closing on may 30 should everything work out okay. now to find a good job up there! The job market hasn't suffered up there really, have a couple prospects and have some savings to keep us good for a month or so, so I'm sure all of that will be okay.. anyhow, I'm excited.

here's the house:
http://www.hpw.com/ShowAllPhotos.aspx?mlsnum=991358

[leah]

awww, cute! welcome to the homeowners' club i closed on my house on the 4th and moved in the 5th . . . was there for a week and now i'm in portland for work (though i'm sitting in the airport about to leave for home, thank goodness--long week!). i can't wait to get back home and finish up all the painting and decorating and whatnot. as soon as i find whatever box my camera cord is in, i will upload some pictures.

houses are so exciting!! :D

[Tuggan]

i hope everything works out with the job search... seems a bit risky to buy a home w/o work in the area.

[Gypsiyee]

It is a bit risky, yeah - I'm not terribly worried about it, though. It was either get a lease that costs more than the monthly payment for a house, or keep trying to find a job from down here and with relocating most of the time your resume goes into the no pile before it's even reviewed.

worst case scenario i give my resume to a headhunter and work a shit job for a while and live off that income and the few thousand dollars in savings.. I try to remember moving down here, and the job market was terrible when I moved here but giving my resume to a temp agency I landed a great job within a week. executive assistants and HR positions seem to be plentiful pretty much everywhere, and thats what I do.

I'm not above getting a job at walmart if I have to, but with a month to find a job we'll be okay I think. looking around at the job market there it's actually pretty good still, doesn't seem to have suffered like the rest of the world. Being a contractor on base I've been able to get my name in a few hats up there too, the only thing being that all reviews for permanent civil service jobs take a month or two to complete.

Thanks for the well wishes - I know the risk I'm taking and I know it sounds crazy, but we'll do what we have to do =)

[Kramer]

that's happy, i have heard that NC is about the prettiest sate in the union. this May will be our first year in our home, i hope everything works out perfectly for you!

[Gypsiyee]

oh and.. to add, we're in kind of a unique situation. like, we don't *have* to move up there on closing. we can stay here and make our payments there if need be, and I can work my job until I have more prospects - the beauty of having your family as your landlord and having a lenient boss who knows your work and respects you enough to let you work comp time out the wazoo and use that instead of leave I reckon. I figure we probably won't move in *on* closing date, but at least I'll have an address for my resume and we can move all our furniture that's just sitting in the garage here up there and take time off to go job searching - the drive isn't too bad, about 7 hours.

and yeah kramer, it's really gorgeous - so green, so many trees. we decided on raleigh because the housing market is cheap, the job market is good, it's 3 hours from a great beach, 2 hours from basketball, and most importantly for me it's only 3 hours from home so i don't have to miss my niece growing up and seeing my mom. it just seemed the best overall choice for us. neither of us like Jacksonville, and I know from and visiting with family and friends outside of Raleigh that I love it there.. it's a big college area, so lots of people our age rather than nothing but mid 50's people.

[Martrae]

What part of NC, Gyps?

[Gypsiyee]

Raleigh

[Maeya]

Congrats on the house! It's really cute, I like it a lot! I've got house fever, big time, so I can't wait to start looking for my own Very pretty area, too. You'll like it.

[Martrae]

Oh noes...we'll be neighbors.

[Gypsiyee]

oh dear. where are you at?!

[Ginzburgh]

What is the asking price for that house? I'm interested to know being that the housing market in North Carolina and Connecticut are drastically different. That house would probably cost $375k in a decent neighborhood in Connecticut.

[araby]

We're gonna be neighbors!

I love Raleigh, I love Asheville even more, though. North Carolina is probably my favorite state.

[Gypsiyee]

What is the asking price for that house? I'm interested to know being that the housing market in North Carolina and Connecticut are drastically different. That house would probably cost $375k in a decent neighborhood in Connecticut.

drastically different for sure. the lp was 124,900. we're paying 122,500 with seller paying closing costs. it's only had one owner, house is 10 years old.

we had concerns that the zip code has some very sketchy reviews, but we saw part of the zip code and can understand why - about a 10 minute drive from the house we saw a house that there was a perfect burner mark in the floor from the stove. wtf are you doing in a house to have a burner have flipped upside down and burn straight through the vinyl floor?! looked like a meth lab blew up in there. you could tell the neighborhood was sketchy right away.

the neighborhood we're buying in looked really nice, though - it was like a whole different world. clean, family type cars, no cabs littering the streets like in the other neighborhood.. jonathan told me once that you can really tell the type of neighborhood by the type of cars, and I never thought about it that way but it's totally true.

in our neighborhood there were a lot of families and a lot of diversity - different races, different ages, different political views (based on bumper stickers and yard signs anyhow) etc - I like neighborhoods like that personally, rather that than a cookie cutter stepford wife build.

[Ginzburgh]

/sigh:

$325k house in Raleigh, NC

http://www.realtor.com/search/listingde ... 100#Detail

$325k house in Fairfield, CT

http://www.realtor.com/search/listingde ... t=1#Detail

[recks]

/sigh:

$325k house in Raleigh, NC

http://www.realtor.com/search/listingde ... 100#Detail

$325k house in Fairfield, CT

http://www.realtor.com/search/listingde ... t=1#Detail

WOW rofl...guess that just reinforces the whole location location location thing

[Ginzburgh]

Fairfield is a mediocare town. If you typed in $325k in most other towns in this area, you'd get "0 Properties Found".

[Martrae]

oh dear. where are you at?!

North of Raleigh by about a mile.

[Arlos]

325k here might get you a 600 sq ft 1BR "condo". Effectively, a 1 BR apartment you buy, rather than rent, if you want anything close to a central location. If you don't mind being in the complete sticks, with a 1 hr commute each way, you'll get more for that, but that either puts you way south or way east, and even then, you're talking about max 1000 sq feet of house on 4500 sq feet of lot. Then you get to contend with hell traffic and 110 degree summers as well.

If you want an actual house in a GOOD area here, and we're not even talking in San Francisco itself, be prepared to shell out 600k and up up up.

-Arlos

[Martrae]

Raleigh's really a great area. Housing is fairly cheap, jobs are plentiful and the weather isn't completely sucky all the time.

[Harrison]

Living near civilization is downright murderous on property and housing.

We got lucky with our house. Was only 190k. The area the house is in isn't bad, but you can't really go past two blocks without hitting a drug dealer infested project.

This house is now 5BR/2bath and a furnished basement as opposed to 3 BR/2bath when we got it.(in...alright condition) We're just now starting on the three rooms we're putting in the garage, and a bathroom. Got it framed, just waiting to get more materials to do more.

We actually have a *gasp* yard in the city to boot. (Nothing like the 45 acres we had in Fairhaven, but...shit happens and you have to move)

[Harrison]

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&g ... 1&t=h&z=18

That was our old house. I miss it, and the MONSTROUS amount of land we had with it.

[Kramer]

in houston if you are in the loop, your looking from 450 (at the real low end) - millions

we are lucky to have founda house just a few blocks outside the loop for 142, it's crazy

[Gypsiyee]

Raleigh's really a great area. Housing is fairly cheap, jobs are plentiful and the weather isn't completely sucky all the time.

So are you guys in durham-ish? I'm glad to hear another person who lives there talking so kindly of it - obviously relocating is scary when we've never lived there, but I've heard nothing but good things and only have good memories of visiting my family there. it's really beautiful there so long as you stay clear of the sketchy neighborhoods, which don't seem to be too common. From what I've seen the job market is great too, so should none of the government jobs stick I'll have backups at least.

Arlos - that's friggin insane. We both took interest in Cali, but the cost of living there is just astronomical. It's too far from family (for me) anyway.. maybe one day when we're rich we'll end up out there, but as for now I'll take my little 120k house!

[Martrae]

Durham is about 30 minutes from here. We're in a sleepy little burg called Wake Forest. It's really a suburb of Raleigh.