MY Home Sweet Home?

With truly uncanny timing, my uncle sent us an email out of the blue along the lines of "Hey, for your wedding gift I'll help you guys find a house."

Okay, he's a realtor - it's probably not that uncanny. But given the recent circumstances, it seemed like a sign.

I've been a renter my entire life. Do you know how dangerous floating the idea of ownership in front of a chronic renter is? My mind suddenly dissolved, becoming slave to "the dream". Being able to paint the walls? To not share a wall with your neighbor? To do laundry in your own home rather than a laundromat where someone takes your stuff out of the washer and throws it all on the floor?

Dangerous.

Now of course, chronic-renter-Penga-dad reminds me that there's upsides to renting too - like maintenance. ( Assuming your apartment actually does any.) And no property tax or hassle. Which is true, and it works out just great for many people. I just don't know that I'm one of them.

The bait had been laid, and I fell hook, line and sinker. YES I WANT A HOUSE UNCLE!

Sak, ever the practical one, thought that there was no way we'd ever be approved for anything since we have a itsy-bitsy credit history. Like, I didn't get a credit card until after college - and I hardly ever use it. But after a bit of prodding from me and a couple more "encounters" with the resident riff-raff, Sak agreed to meet with a broker.

Surprisingly, there were no problems. Apparently a long credit history isn't so important. Having a "steady" job seems to be the main requirement (though in this day-and-age I don't see how anything is considered steady).

In any case, we submitted two years of W-2's, two months of pay statements, and copies of our driver licenses (although mine has a hole in it because the California DMV hasn't sent my new-name one yet...It's been over 3 months already!). Our broker pulled up our credit reports, we filled out some disclosures, and we were rather painlessly pre-approved.

Of course, at this point I was salivating over just about every house on the market. My uncle told us to put together some criteria to help us narrow the field a bit. Here's what we came up with:

1) Safety. Nothing near apartments, busy streets, alchy stores or anything that "just looks sketchy". Leering teenagers in big groups, obviously a red flag.

2) Something bigger than what we currently have. This is really a no-brainer though, since we live in a hole.

That's it! Not too specific, so it's no wonder we've seen a bazillion houses stretching from Millbrae to Redwood City so far. Though I'm getting antsy and our lease is (finally) set to end in March, we're taking our time trying to find a good house. We put an offer on only one so far, and it was flat-out rejected by some jerk trying to flip his non-lived-in house for more than it's worth. *fume fume* But I'm not giving up, we'll find something awesome, I'm sure!

Have you bought property before? Any tips?