buying a home...

isn't all its cracked up to be! Since moving to Pittsburgh a year ago, Nathan and I have looked into buying a house a few times. Sounds exciting doesn't it? Buying a house? Yeah, we thought so, but every time we started looking into it we were reminded of the amazingly high tax rates here in the burgh. Currently we live north of the city, which we love... Nathan works up here, its easy to get to I79 so we can go home (WV), our new church is up here, the schools are some of the best, and we are surrounded by great communities/neighborhoods. With everything as wonderful as it seems, you sure do pay for it.
We've recently been looking into a few different options. One option was to buy a house that is in real need of fixing. We'd literally have to keep our apartment while we replaced all the flooring, put in a new kitchen with all new appliances, painted everything, etc. We really liked the idea of a house, all to our own, as well as the idea of fixing it up the way we wanted. Once we looked over the costs and time it would take, we decided it wasn't something we should do right now. So, this past weekend we put in a bid on a townhouse. Its just beautiful inside, and perfect for us. But...(there is always a but) we're dealing with a seller who wants every penny and isn't willing to budge, even a little. We made an offer, he made a counter offer, we made a counter offer, he said he wanted more money... we're waiting. 10 phone calls in a matter of a couple of hours and we decide to put a hold on everything. We're hoping that he will give in and take our last offer and give up on sqeezing us dry. It honestly wouldn't be so bad except with the taxes, (as I mentioned before) you add at least $300 onto your mortgage... and I guess that wouldn't be so bad if we had lower priced houses. Just another thing we miss about WV.
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on how it all turns out, but if you would, say a little prayer for us?

on another note: Welcome to our adventure!