1910 American Foursquare: Purchase

The purpose of this post is to outline how my Husband and I were able to buy a house with 10k in savings and 200k in student loans.

I completed a Masters program in the Spring of 2011 and then moved to Boston to live with my partner Stephen while he completed his degree. We were living in the Fenway neighborhood which was experiencing dramatic rent increases. A $200/month rent hike was the catalyst to pull the trigger on our first home.

The issue we faced is that Stephen, being a college student, had no income and we had a ton of student debt. We knew that we would not be able to afford anything worth living in and had to look outside of the city. We decided to head south to the suburbs to try and find a good deal... at the tail end of the 08 collapse. We met with a realtor and gave him our criteria: "this is how much we think we can afford, and we don't want to die".

We were told by the bank that we would qualify for a FHA loan. We located a property, it fell through. We located a second property... a 1910 American Square recently occupied by an elderly widow who was now in assisted living. Her children, armed with the task of selling the home, put it on the market "as is" for $290k.

We made the offer, started the process, and agreed on a final price of 273k, installation of a radon unit, and updated electric (knob + tube). We didn't renew our Boston Lease and moved to month to month housing not far from the home. This is when the closing was delayed until Easter the following year...

The bank had mis-calculated my earnings vs my debt and I no longer qualified for the mortgage. Luckily my college roommate of 7 years just got a job the town over and needed a place to live. He co-signed the mortgage and we were on our way. 

The entire purchase process was a complete nightmare. By the end I was not speaking with my realtor who I had felt did not have my best interest at hand and was more interested in a quick sale, which this clearly was not. 

Eight months after starting the process we put down 3k dollars and took ownership of the house.