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I'm a twenty-nine year old Army wife currently living near a large Army post. I have an unhealthy obsession with Dr. Pepper, the Internet, cloth diapers, and ridiculous TV shows. I'm a stay at home mom to two beautiful daughters, AJ and Amelia. We also have a 6 year old beagle named Abby who is as dumb as a box of rocks.
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Saturday, June 26, 2010

House-Hunting....Online?

We are at sort of a crossroads in military life. We just moved here to FLW and we already know when and where our next PCS will be. I'm pretty sure this is the first time in the history of the Army that this has happened to someone. ;) D is only here to attend a 6 month long course, we we will be moving on most likely before 2010 is over. Yep. We're moving twice in 7 months with a baby. Sounds fun, huh?

Well, I think it will be fun! Our next post is more than likely going to be our "home" for the rest of D's time in the Army. We have lots of friends who are stationed there or will be stationed there about the time we get there. We can settle in and raise our family there. We can move there and probably never have to move again with the Army (there might be one more move in there, but we'll always end up back at the "home" base).

We decided to buy a house there.

Eeeek! D and I have been grateful renters for our entire married life, me for several years before that as well. I love renting. If something goes wrong, you call maintenance and they come fix it for you. For free. You don't have to deal with broken AC units or plumbing problems. You don't pay property taxes of HOA fees. All that will be thrown out the window when we buy a house!

Even though I'm silently freaking out about this change, I am also really, really excited about it. I feel like we're ready for it and we will finally be able to make changes to suit our tastes. We will be able to paint the walls, put up a fence, or plant a garden and we know we will be around to tend to it next year.

We have moved 4 times since D commissioned in May 2007. Yep. That is 4 times in 3 years. We're not talking about cross-town moves here, either. We are awesome at packing up all our worldly belongings, driving across the country, baby and dog in tow and sleeping in hotels for weeks on end. I am also excellent at looking at rental houses online and finding our newest temporary lodging home from more than 2,000 miles away.

This time its a little different. We are looking at houses to purchase online. Obviously I will make a trip to our new base before we buy a house, but the bulk of our house hunting is being done on a MacBook from more than 1,000 miles away. It just seems different from all the rental searches I've done in the past. I feel like I should be there looking at these places instead of sitting on my sofa. In due time, I guess.

Looking at houses online can be tough. You are dependent on the pictures that are provided to you. There is always a lot more to the house than you can see in pictures. I think that freaks me out a little bit. In the past the mindset has been, well, if we hate it, we only have to live there for a year. When purchasing a home though, the mindset is there that, if we hate it, we have to still continue to pay the mortgage for another 29 years! Yes, we can change things, but that costs money! What if the neighborhood looks great at first viewing, but once we move in we realize that everyone who lives there are actually swingers?! Okay, so that is unlikely, but you get my point.

What are your thoughts on this? Any other milspouses (or civilians) "house-shopped" online before physically viewing them?

7 comments:

  1. Good luck on finding a house! How exciting!!!

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  2. Oh, the moving life of the military family! I hope that it turns out to be a breeze for you! And baby too :)

    Welcome to my blog, dear! Thank you so much for stopping by & following! I hope that you're enjoying my posts about my travels to Italy last week! ♥

    * http://donandamanda.blogspot.com *

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  3. thast how chris and i found our house. We worked with the VA mortgage center and they give you a realtor in the area you're moving to (which im guessing is where we are...) what we did was we found about 10-12 houses we really liked, gave the MLS numbers to the realtor and then we made an appointment and the realtor took us through all the houses we wanted to see. email me if y ou have any questions

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  4. Hi thanks for following Our Soldiers Make Us Sisters =)
    I am a new follower =)
    Have a fantastic weekend!!!!

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  5. Your blog is 'disabled' in my dashboard. I can't access it and your posts don't show up, weird.

    I love looking for houses online, I look just to look. I hope the place you are going is a place that has a lot of realtors willing to help you.

    Good luck!

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  6. Found you today through Household 6 Diva .. :) Have you tried looking at AHRN.com?
    Good Luck with the house!!

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  7. I am catching up on your posts and saw this one. We are about to close on a house (this month!!) and I have only seen pictures. We will be using a POA to close and will be paying the mortgage for about 3 months before we even walk into the house. My parents have been able to go an walk through it and will be at closing for us though.

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I'd love to know what you think...