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Finally. :)

This quote I found on Pinterest speaks volumes to me.

I made a decision earlier in the year, around April/May timeframe, to try and buy my own home.

Scariest decision of my life.

Buying a home seems to make sense to most people.  I get it.  It's a great investment, tax write-off, cheaper than rent, paying your own home off instead of someone else's. For me though it's not always been something I wanted to do. Not on m own anyway.

The dream is to meet someone, get married, buy a home, have babies, right?

That's always been my dream anyway but things have not worked out that way and I finally accepted that it may never workout that way.  

I also did not want to buy a home yet because I'm living hundreds of miles away from my family and closest friends.  Will I live here in Denver forever? Because buying a home feels like a "forever" type of deal to me.  Not only that, since I do live here by myself, if I buy a home that means I'll have to take care of it.  Where as before, if something broke all I had to do was call the landlord and guess what! They HAD to fix it and it wasn't coming out of my own pocket.

The last guy I dated kind of unexpectedly gave me a push in buying my own home.  He was very insecure and intimidated by my success: I have a place I can afford on my own, that I furnished on my own, paid for with a great job.  After I got over the ridiculousness of why he was breaking up with me I realized he was right.  I absolutely can do anything and everything on my own.  So I went to a home-buying seminar through my bank.  Then a few weeks later, after sitting on the idea some more, I went to my credit union and applied for a pre-approval for a VA mortgage loan.

And I was approved.

All on my own.

For $200,000.

What?

The first house I tried to buy was beautiful.

It was this small cottage built in like 1931.

It was on a double lot on the outskirts of Denver, a central location to work, school, and fun.

The inspection went about as horribly as you can expect a home built in 1931 to go.  What a learning curve.  After the owner was unwilling to fix any of the major issues, I moved on.

I then put a bid on a condo in my favorite neighborhood.  I overbid by $3000 and someone outbid me.  Ugh.  Let me tell you... I looked at a lot of homes.  Houses, condo's, townhouses.  Most everything in my price range (which is really low for Denver - I could buy ginormous homes in my hometown for that price point), were fixer uppers.  Especially the houses.  I do not want a fixer upper.  It's just me here and I didn't want something I had to fix up, not for $200,000 anyway.

Then I found this townhouse

  

It's perfect for me and Gandalf.

It is only a 1 bedroom and 1 1/2 bathroom BUT it's 1030sqft.  It also requires no fixing up and is a lot less than what I got approved for.  The neighborhood is nice, it's close to the lite-rail to take me to school or downtown and it's still not far from work.  It's got a small patio and it backs onto a small greenbelt area.  It's also got a really nice park within walking distance.  

So.  I bought it.

 

And everything feels right.  This is my place.

It's home.

Nicole