I was chatting with a friend this morning who is also looking to buy a house in the “ghetto” and she made a comment about how she thought it was easy for me to give up suburbia and move into the hood. Sadly, I had to admit the struggles and lack of faith I had when we were making that decision. A year later, and as we are about to close on our first home, I still sometimes struggle with the desire for a “nicer”, bigger “prettier” home in a “better” neighborhood, with a bigger yard and “safer” neighbors. Several of our friends live in gorgeous houses and sometimes I long for that. The houses around here… well they have a lot of character and will always be less than ideal.

It isn’t a nine bedroom, but we did find a house. It’s not to far from where we are now and while I really wasn’t in love with it, the house is starting to grow on me. It has a decent sized fenced yard (which will be awesome!) and a very large dining room (which is where we do the mass majority of our hosting). There is a second bathroom on the first floor and a possible 6th room in the basement. The kitchen is quite small, but we are going to knock out the wall between it and the dining room to open things up. There are actually a few renovations we will be making prior to moving in. We had our inspection yesterday and there doesn’t seem to be anything horrible, however there may be an issue with the roof that could affect FHA, so we had to amend the offer a tad. Stephen had a meeting with the bank today and finalized our loan. We ended up with a lower interest rate which knocked about $100 off our mortgage payments, so that was a blessing. I have enjoyed the times we have spent over at the house because the neighborhood has proved to be quite lively. Many of our neighbors appear to spend a lot of time out on their lawns and porches and there are folks out walking down the sidewalks too and so I am excited about the opportunities we will have to get to know our neighbors and other folks in the hood.