Still searching for home

As the final weeks count down until I must leave my beloved home forever, it occurred to me today after three exhausting and fruitless months of searching for a new place to live that maybe I ought to consider buying a cheap foreclosure home. There are several in the area that are highly appealing, including one just doors down from the home in which I grew up. I have heard tales of those homes going for half of the asking price and this is a buyer's market with historically low interest rates, so I began investigating the possibility and even found myself being pre-approved for a loan through Quicken Loans, so that's a good way to start. I found a very cheap little foreclosure two bedroom on the city's north side that I figured I might be able to afford with an asking price of a mere $29,900, but was dismayed to discover that it recently sold for $15,000, so it's gone already. The house near my mom, a real beauty, has an asking price of $57,900, and my guess is that it won't go for much below $50,000, so I don't think I could afford to buy such a house, which breaks my heart because nothing would make me happier than to be back on the street on which I grew up and in my own home to boot. Since I do not have much in the way of a down payment, there would be additional fees tacked on to the mortgage, and even more dismaying is that there are tons of hidden fees that nobody tells you about until you do a bit of research. Were I to take out, say, a $40,000 loan, I'd end up paying close to half of that, or nearly $20,000 in hidden fees: mortgage insurance, brokers fees, closing costs and real estate conveyance fees. So ultimately, despite the fact that paying a mortgage is often less than paying rent, those hidden fees could tack on significant costs that would make buying a home prohibitive for someone in my lower income bracket, so I am stuck spending the rest of my life paying exorbitant rents instead of having a chance to have a home of my own. I am so terribly envious of my younger siblings. My brother inherits our family home and will thus never have to worry about having a roof over his head, and my younger sister and her husband have a paid off home as well. My elder sister and I will have to spend our lives paying someone else for the privilege of renting their property and will thus never have a chance to build equity and have a permanent investment to call our own.

I have decided that as my time in this long time apartment comes to a close, I am going to have to settle on one of the many apartments that I have seen, none of which has really appealed to me, but I am running out of time to decide where I want to live, so I am going to have to settle. I'm decidedly underwhelmed by every single place that I have seen, but my thinking is that all I would have to do would be to stay for a year and then start looking for something else next winter, when the window for fall of 2014 rentals opens up again. That window has been firmly shut since around late January and the pickings of apartments has been slim except for the very tony and upscale apartments that are well beyond my ability to afford. Much of the good affordable and walkable housing here has been torn down for tax abated development and every single landlord to whom I have spoken is angry about it, because each home that is demolished is thousands of dollars in property tax revenue that supports city services and schools, and now the city is coming to the taxpayers begging for levies to replace the lost tax revenue. Landlords are outraged because that means that they have to raise their rents and that makes it harder for them to do business. Many of the places that I have seen have pretty steep rents, I am told, in part, in anticipation of these levies passing and higher property taxes that must be then passed on to tenants. That is why, in a way, I so want out of being a renter. Rents in this town are just going to keep going up with every home demolished, because these homes are replaced with tax abated development, meaning that the city won't collect income tax on them for many years. Oh, they can say, but we'll get sales tax on the business generated, but that's really not enough to replace lost property taxes that support public services. Rents are going to have to keep rising in town as more homes are torn down to make way for new tax abated businesses, so it makes little sense to keep throwing money out the window and having no equity in a home to call my own. I'm going to have to work with someone who can guide me through the maze of home buying options who can untangle all of the jargon for me and help me not to get trapped paying fees that I can't afford. A friend suggested a mortgage broker, but their fees are $3000+, and since I could never pay that up front, it would have to be added to the mortgage and probably at a higher interest rate, too. All I really want is a 2-4 bedroom home, nothing special, something small and cozy to call mine. I wish so badly that I could buy the home on the same street as my mom, but I just do not know if I could make a fairly lowball offer and be accepted. It's a foreclosure and may well go for fairly cheap, but on my income, it would have to go for about half the asking price before I could afford it, and I kind of doubt that an offer that low would be acceptable for a house in relatively nice shape. Maybe if I could talk a family member into going into it with me, it might be manageable. Still, none of us is terribly well off and it would probably be a stretch for any of us to afford to buy a home. So I wish and hope and dream and pray that maybe someday, Lady Luck will smile on me and let me win the Powerball Lottery something that would allow me to win enough money to buy a house of my very own. Until then, all it can remain is a very distant dream while I continue to make others wealthy by throwing money out the window renting.