Some of the houses we looked at to rent in our price range were, um, not very good to put it nicely. Here is one of the houses we looked at. Now, in my defense it looked much nicer in the photos that were posted online! Needless to say we politely passed on this gem of a home! And yes, the trees really are growing THROUGH the fence!
With lack of options we decided our best bet was to purchase a home. We were able to get our mortgage payment (with taxes and insurance) under what it would take to rent this beauty above. Shocking I know!
Because we don't have financial freedom yet, we decided to go with a VA loan over a traditional loan. We didn't have to put any money done and that was a life saver for us. By that point, we were getting low on funds.
The Marine Corps will reimburse up to 10 days Temporary Lodging Expense (TLE). In a nutshell, they were only going to pay for 10 of the 45 total days we ended up staying at the hotel. We were lucky enough that our hotel, La Quinta, allowed pets with no limit. After 45 days the room was getting smaller and smaller, even though we had a suite.
Originally we were going through USAA for our VA loan. We got our pre-approval and decided on a home. When we contacted them for funding we found out it would take a minimum of 30 days to close. That may not seem like that long except we had already paid over $2000 in hotel costs. So we couldn't afford another 30 days.
Luckily we were able to go through a local bank and from application to closing it took about 10 days! We were so lucky and we absolutely love the bank we went through. We were also able to get our household good shipment relatively quick. But even without our furniture it was so nice to have a place of our very own with more than one room!And our dogs were happy to get their own room too. Here you can see Tyson and Meadow checking out their new home!
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