Hello everyone!
It's been awhile since I posted anything...but with good reason.
I'm so excited to say that WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!
My husband and I got married in October of 2011 (we lived in FL then) and if feels like we've been searching for HOME. The first place we lived in belonged to my parents friends and they let us live there cheap .....like seriously, it was a huge 4 bedroom house on 2 lots and we paid $300 a month. (which is a Godsend for newlyweds). We lived there for 7 months and had to find a different place because the house was getting foreclosed. So we got our first apartment. It was a very cute 2 bedroom apartment. The town we lived in was just beginning to build these apartment complexes so everything was fresh and only $650 a month. We had our first child while living there.
So we lived there for a year. While living there we talked about buying a house and so toward the end of our lease we went to a credit union to try to get a mortgage which we got DENIED. Understandably though. We didn't have much of a credit history. I didn't even though I was 23. As someone growing up in a Russian family, its VERY common that until you're married, you love with your parents. That was my case. Plus I even only got my first job ever 1 year before I got married. And my husband hasn't been in America that long yet to create his credit history.
Anyway, we decided it was probably for the best, this gave us a chance to rent a home and see if it's time for us. We rented a 2 bedroom home in a community with a fitness center and pool. Very cute area ....for only $750. And we lived there for a year. During this time, (and before we met), my husband was working for Holiday Inn as a night auditor but he got his bachelor's in Moldova for computer programming.
A little more than half way through our lease, a friend of my father's told him that he knew a guy who was looking for a computer programmer. So he finally got a job that was related to his degree. For several months, he had to drive for about 1 hour to work, and so when our lease was coming to an end, we decided to move closer.
And so again, a year after moving in, we moved. This time we decided to rent an apartment, because we saw we weren't ready for a home. It was a very nice, renovated 2 bedroom apartment, just 10 minutes from downtown Sarasota, for $950. We lived here for 2 years. And we had our 2nd child here. His job then decided to relocated him to Tennessee!
And here we go again, we were moving again; but this time it was further and to a place where we didn't know anyone. We left all our family and friends and moved to an unfamiliar place. We rented a 3 bedroom apartment remotely for almost $1300. Quite the jump from all the other rentals. The apartments had 3 types of units.
`1 level apartments located under 2 story townhouses, and then they had tri levels.
So we lived in the one level, and it being an old apartment complex, whenever someone walked across their room upstairs, it sounded like stomping. Our neighbors upstairs had a dog, and it caused my kids to wake up in the middle of the night, scared from the sounds. So 4 months later, we asked them to relocated us to their tri level unit that was almost $1500!.
It was tough. But we survived the year of our lease and were planning on moving a town over where the rent was cheaper, but somehow in 2 months time, we bought a house!
Finally! and house to call a home (and we're ready for it this time) no more moving.