We bought a house!

Well we did it! We bought a house!

We left for Texas after work last Thursday and got in around 1am. Thank God for Grandparents! Since we got there late Thursday we had all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to go house hunting. We stepped foot in 16 houses on Friday and decided not to even go in another 5 or 6. We found the house we liked the most on Friday but wanted to look at a few more on Saturday in the next town over (even though they had a little higher tax rate). The next morning our realtor woke up early and had this feeling like she should call the builder back (it was an inventory house with Gehan Homes) and they said it sold right after we left on Friday! We were bummed but we decided to look at some of their other inventory homes. And we found this beauty!

It's 2,600 sq ft with 4 bedrooms and 2.5 baths. The master bathroom has a separate shower and garden tub. All bathrooms have marble counters and tile showers. The master bedroom walk in closet is 14' long X 5' deep! There is a gas fireplace, upgraded kitchen cabinets, upgraded carpet and pad, upgraded foundation, upgraded radiant barrier in the attic, cable in every bedroom, 2 car garage. Its beautiful! If you want to check out more pics check out our flickr page.

Oh and did I mention they gave us $11,500 in buyer incentives?! We can use that money basically any way we want for either a down payment, buying down points, closing costs, etc.

So it looks like after we close here in NJ we will drive down and close over there.

Our house is sold!

While I haven't had the chance to blog about it yet, we put our house on the market the week before Christmas. Well we accepted an offer on it the other week and will be closing March 25th! Praise the Lord! So much less stress now.

Whether or not the house sold in time was a big deciding factor for a lot of things. We would have had to leave March 5th even though the house wasn't sold yet, we would have needed to find a cheap apartment really quickly, plus a storage unit. Now since we wont be paying two mortgages that frees us to buy a house right away or even get an apartment that might cost a little xtra $$.

Speaking of buying a house, we will be going down to Texas this month to go house hunting. We are really hoping to be able to put an offer down by the time we get back. So thats the update. More to come after our trip.

Our Two Week Visit - The houses

The Houses
Erin did most of the house hunting while we were there because I was working most of the time. Although I did get to go out on Saturday and Sunday with her. The one thing I did get to do while working was talk with people and figure out the areas we want to live in.

Some areas weren't that nice and some were more expensive because of the location. While we are still open to suggestions, the area we decided to live in is the Buda/Kyle area. It is about a 20 min. drive to my work when there is not much traffic but during rush hour its about an hour. Which is what I was expecting. And coming from NJ, thats even better than driving to Philly during rush hour. The are putting in a toll road though which I think will help tremendously! Because Texans don't like toll roads no one uses them! So when they add that it should be pretty empty. They are also putting a light rail in Austin as well. So hopefully that will ease the traffic as well.

As for the Kyle/Buda area, they have an HEB (their big grocery store), a Super Walmart, a Cabelas, some good places to eat, its a good school system, and they are also building a hospital.

During our house hunt we decided not to check out used homes because by the time we got there those homes might not be on the market anymore. So we stuck with new construction. After checking a few builders we decided that if we go new then we will probably go with a builder called Legacy. We got to walk through one of their houses called The Panola (see image). It has:

• 2,776 sq. ft.
• 9 ft ceilings
  
• granite kitchen counter tops
• marble bathroom sink tops
• 4 bedrooms plus game room, media room, and office
• Walk in closet in the master bedroom and a separate garden tub and shower in the master bath
• 2 car garage
• and a whole bunch of other things as well
  

What would you expect to pay for something like that over here in NJ? $400K maybe? At least. Well If we were to get this we would only spend $194K !!! Ok, you can wipe the drool off of your keyboard now.

So all that to say, we will continue our journey in searching for a house when we get there and we might even still buy used (its even cheaper!) but we wont get to look at those until we go there.

Our Two Week Visit - The Job

The Job
Texas Municipalities League Intergovernmental Employee Benefit Pool, or TML IEBP for short, is the name of my company. We provide Texas government agencies, municipalities, and school districts with employee benefits such as medical, dental, flex, IRA's, etc.

My main role there is to support our online enrollment system that employers and employees use to sign up for these benefits. For those techies that are interested, we are using the LAMP model (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP 4.x). My plan is to upgrade some of these systems but right now we are just working on a back log of projects and issues that have come up since the other guy left.

Great company to work for. They pay 100% of my benefits (I have to pay for the family though), 6.2% into an IRA, $60 a month into a Healthcare Flex account, and instead of Social Security we pay like 6% into what is called the TMRS (Tx Municipal Retirement system). Is basically like social security. But the good thing is that if I work there for 5+ years they will match 2:1 when I retire. Lets see...after 3 years they start paying you $100 per year on your anniversary. So on my 3 year anniversary I get an extra $300. If im there for 10 years I get an extra $1,000. And most people have been there for a long time. 10+ years. Oh...and we also have this healthy initiative thing. Every quarter you get points for doing healthy things. For example: 2 points for every mile you jog/walk, or .5 points if you drink 48 oz of water that day, or even .5 point for flossing your teeth! If you have 200+ points for the quarter they give you $100! So thats pretty nice.

As for the people...they are great. Everyone is very nice and my department is a great group too. Oh, and I have a window cube.