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I have been thinking a lot lately about my home. Also about how it fits or better yet doesn't fit with my needs and our lifestyle. Being disabled there are many needs someone has and sometimes when your home no longer fits you need to make a change.
I have looked at moving to somewhere else in my town. I have looked at renting a place because I am quite tired of all the things in my home that need to be fixed. The costs of renting a place have doubled or even tripled in my town in the past few years due to new businesses in the area.
It might be time to look into buying a home. Well, a better home than we have, anyway. Our current home is a mobile home and while we own it, there are quite a few things wrong with it and things that need to be changed to make it easier for me to live here.
There are stairs leading into the home. It would help me out a lot to have a walk-in home on the ground. It is only 4 steps. that isn't very many. But when my arthritis is bad or my gout is flaring up and I can't put weight on that leg/foot. It is nearly impossible for me to get up and down the stairs.
Also, I need wider doors so I can fit my wheelchair through the home. My doors are not wide enough so when I do need to use the wheelchair in my home, I am stuck in my room and can't even get into the bathroom. Because of my weight, I have an extra-wide wheelchair. The doors may be wide enough for a transfer chair but my insurance only pays for a certain chair for me and it is too wide to fit through.
I also need to completely change my bathroom into an accessible one. I have a bathtub and would prefer a walk-in shower. Right now I use a shower chair that is longer so it goes over the bathtub and I can sit down and kinda scoot into my shower. It's called a transfer bench.
We have started looking at alternative homes and that means a mortgage. There is so much to consider when choosing a mortgage like the company, a relator, and everything else that goes with buying a home.
How do we know if we can afford a mortgage? Our current home is owner carried. I used MortgageCalculators.info for research. They have calculators on renting vs buying, refinancing, and even how to pay off your loan early!
I also used consumerfinance.gov for research and they have some handy how-to guides. There are many resources out there for education on home buying and how to make buying a home affordable.
I walked through the renting vs buying calculator. It tells you based on your rent, property insurance amount, and financing percent for interest, how much home you can afford. I used the average rental amount for a 1 bedroom apartment in my city. I was quite surprised as to the amount of home it would cover.
As with rent prices right now home prices have shot up dramatically. I have a friend who just sold her house in our town and she ended up getting quite a bit over asking and having multiple offers on her home. It is a seller's market right now. I did find some articles that it might be on the verge of changing and sales are beginning to slow. That will mean a better time to buy is on the horizon.
So maybe it's time to look at buying a new home. Make sure you are following all of our social media for announcements and updates!!
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