Chris & Naomi Hathaway Home

Yesterday we went to a mortgage company to see if we could pre-qualify for a loan and start looking at houses. I found a great house right near UTD (and the public library) for $115000. It sounded like a pretty good deal for a 3 bedroom house in a good location. They have a program here for 1st time home-buyers where you can get really good interest rates and even some help with a down-payment. Guess what! We pre-qualified for $80000. We weren't all that excited, but realized the monthly budget that amount would require was about as high as we could realistically go. We were glad we went because we learned a lot about the home loan process, but it looks like we'll be renters a bit longer. The only houses we could afford at that price would be pretty old and would need a lot of work. We probably wouldn't have enough money or time to buy a house that needed that much attention.