hunting houses

I must admit that I never quite got into the phrase "house hunting". Do the houses run away, and you have to hunt them down? Or do they bolt, and you have to try to shoot them? Do you sit in the bushes like a sniper until they happen to drive by? It's unclear.

So what most people don't know is that Guy and I have been talking about buying a house. And to correct what you are thinking right now, we actually started looking at houses before we decided to get married. That's the truth, there you have it. But now we're more serious about it. And once you recover from the last two shocks (1) us getting married and 2) us looking for a house), sit down and breathe, and then read on.

The house is going to be in suburbia.

And I mean that. It's going to be in soccer-mom county, SUV district, the land of stipmalls, the place where sidewalks don't exist because they're superfluous. But just to ease your mind on one count: we're not pregnant (yet). So I won't turn into a soccer mom quite yet.

As for the house: we want it to be in the "perfect" location, where "perfect" is defined as 1) a safe area and 2) as a location that optimizes our combined commute. And the global optimum for those two constraints happens to be in the Munster/Schererville/Dyer area in Indiana. It's actually quite nice there (once you (I) get over the stripmall). You can do such crazy things as park your car, or get out of the city in minutes, or see kids run around without adults, or buy a house without winning the lottery, all of which are things of impossibility where we live right now. And it's very nice and green and quiet, and a surprising number of "loop-commuters" (people that commute to downtown Chicago) live there. One of my bosses remarked that by moving there we would probably double the Democratic population. This may not be too far from the truth (sigh), but we'll see.

Tomorrow, we have our first appointment with a real estate agent. I picked her because I like her web site the best: she let people search available properties without them having to give out their phone number, email address, social security number, and shoe size. Not a very professional way of locating a real estate agent. We'll see tomorrow if this is a good heuristic.

Since we'll probably buy a house some time between now and next summer, any experience or advice on house buying and/or mortgages will be highly appreciated. Wish us luck!