Well, not yet, the first week of December.

If you’re a frequent reader of this site, I’m sure you know the husband and I were looking to purchase a house. I say “were,” because we are no longer looking to buy for several reasons. Here are some of them:

• Didn’t want to deal with a Short Sale and the time period it takes to close escrow. Unfortunately, Short Sales are currently the norm;
• Not interested in buying a REO/Lender Owned property, they’re typically in need of thousands of dollars in improvements;
• We’re not the type of people to make a giant investment decision based on a 15 minute walk-through, which is basically what you need to do, if you like a house and want to get it … etc., etc.

So after months of looking and one more, which turned out to be final, disappointment we put looking on the back burner for a couple of months. We just needed a break. For us, wanting to purchase a house in the current market was very stressful, time consuming, and ultimately unsatisfying. Sure we could’ve settled, but we know we would not have been happy with our decision. Settling and compromising are two different things. The way I see it, settling is buying a house just to buy it (it’s a great price or it’s in a great neighborhood), whereas compromising is buying the house that might not have all of your must-have features (hardwood floors or a foyer). The bottom line, buying a home is a very personal thing and you should only do it if it feels right.

After our self-imposed house hunting timeout, we decided to continue to rent, but move out of our current place. We wanted something bigger and closer to the beach. Once we made our decision, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to find a house. We looked at several places, all found via craigslist, and signed a lease within a week. However, I’m not so sure that it would’ve been so easy had we not seen 200+ houses over the past several months.

The best thing, it’s exactly what  and where we were looking to buy. So, for us it’s a win-win. We got the house we wanted and get to keep our down payment in the bank. For all of you who are still looking to move to your ideal home in the ideal neighborhood my advice to you is to look at alternatives, it just might pay-off.