sticks and bricks

I've been wanting to buy my own home for years. My first year out of college, when I was living in the same city (but not the same house) as my mother, she would come by my office every Thursday to pick me up for our standing lunch date. En route to our go-to sushi restaurant, we'd always detour a bit through the neighborhood between the college where I worked and the strip mall where the restaurant lived. This neighborhood, bordered by a public golf course, the Knights of Columbus Hall (where I voted), and a busy commercial strip, was perpetually dotted with For Sale signs, and the bungalow homes were perfect daydream material for a broke-and-in-debt woman in her barely-20s.

I moved to Washington, DC in August 2008 for graduate school, and a month later the economy fell apart, and "sub-prime mortgage" became a widely-used euphemism for "big fat scam." Student loans didn't help my debt situation, and monthly rent triple what I'd been paying previously didn't help my disposable income situation, so home ownership remained wishful thinking.

Now, at the age of 28, I've graduated with my Master's degree (ho!), found a stable job that I like and that allows me to grow professionally, paid off my credit card debt, and watched the economy gradually improve. Those years of saying "when I get my act together, I'll do this" have been gaining on me for some time, and though I can't be sure, I suspect my act has been largely gotten-together - so it's time for me to make good on my plan.

So, off I go! I'll be sharing with you, via this blog (nesticity, y'all, everybody's doing it), my experience of navigating the stressful, costly, and exhilarating process of buying a home - from the very, very beginning. At this point, the only step I've taken is to read about what steps I should take - and there are a heck of a lot of them! Close your eyes, hold your nose, and dive in...