About us and why we want a house

Ok a little background about us and some of the reasons I want a house so badly.

My husband and I have been together for a little over 12 yrs. We have been married for 3 yrs. We have two kitties named Ambit and Meeko.

I am 38 and have severe arthritis in my knees and, not so severe yet, arthritis in my hips. This makes things quite interesting for my mobility at times. The apt we currently live in did mark a handicap spot for me in front of our apt but the restriction is ignored a lot by our neighbors and our guests. This sometimes can make just getting to my front door a chore because parking is a premium here. This is one reason for a house. I dont have to worry about someone stealing my parking spot and I have to make a trek just to get to my door.

We have been in this apartment for 4 yrs and as time goes on our neighbors get louder and louder. Our newest neighbors that share a wall enjoy their music but I think they must be either deaf or very proud of their music because they play it VERY loudly and love to share it with the building. The neighbors across the way live out their very own soap opera and quite frequently do it in the shared hallway for all the apartments so we can all hear every bit of their drama. Lastly, the neighbors upstairs have 3 small children that have feet made of cinder blocks. There is a constant rumble and thump in the ceilings that can be quite distracting when I come in from work at 2am and I'm trying to sleep while they are getting up and running around like happy little children have a tendency to do.

Right now we live in a 984 square 2 bedroom 2 bathroom apartment. The master bedroom was converted to an office for all the computers because we have a lot of them. (13 at last count) The master bath was converted to the kitties own bath because I couldnt figure out where to put there litter box and food that wouldnt be in the way somewhere else.

When we moved into the apartment it was around $600/mo which was great. Now we are paying almost $850/mo for the same apartment and it's definitely not so great. There have been no upgrades to the apartment. More and more seems to be falling apart in fact. I am tired of throwing away all of that money each month and I cant even paint the walls.

I am a huge huge fan of HGTV so I want a house that I can actually fix the way I want and not the way some cookie cutter apartment designer wants.

My husband is very laid back and hasnt been keen on the idea of a house because, as he says, there will be long "honey do" lists for him. heh. He's right but I want to do a lot of stuff myself so I can say I did that!

We finally decided to do this when I heard about the rebate that is being offered for 1st time buyers. I figured this was the perfect time! Now, to be honest, I didnt think we had a chance in hell of being able to get mortgage approval. My credit has been horrible for most of my adult life. The past three years though I have worked very hard to have no late payments and nothing that doesnt get paid. I was VERY excited when the lendor my friend Judith connected us with said that I was pre-approved for $75k. It was very close because we cant include my husband's credit, due to recent blips, but we had to include his debts.

But the approval was there and the search began!