Update - Meeting with our Agent!

Here's one place in Portland we won't be looking at houses:

As you know, we met with our new real estate agent for the first time on Wednesday!  We really liked her and are excited to work with her!  She is incredibly knowledgeable about real estate and about houses and she loves to work with first time home buyers and share that knowledge. 


Fortunately she didn't have any bad news for us and seemed excited to help us buy a house within our goals.  There were a few things that we were surprised by, though.  First, we didn't realize all of the problems you can run into with houses in the city.  Who would have guessed that you can find houses right in Portland that aren't hooked up to the public sewer?  Of course, with all the old houses we'll be looking at we have to keep in mind all the things like lead paint and asbestos that we'll have to watch out for.  It will be good to have someone who is experienced with old houses letting us know about all these things in each house and of course the inspection will be important!  One thing she told us that we felt really good about is that she won't hesitate to tell us if she thinks a house has too many risk factors and isn't worth bothering with. 

Another thing we were surprised by and happy about is that we definitely should not rule out looking at short sales.  A short sale could be a really good deal for us since our price range is low for the areas we want to look but since we have a lot of cashed saved up we will be able to handle the upfront costs that you can run into.  Overall the meeting was very encouraging and we're exciting to get shopping!

In other news, we talked to a mortgage consultant today and he didn't think we should have any problem getting preapproved for the price range we're looking at.  Yeay next steps!