Doing the 'homework' deeper

 

Not a rose, still pretty

 Roseburg is the winner.

 Even if we don't get the two houses I have picked, I'm doing all the statistical work for utility costs, weather and such. The weather really is about like San Diego though a tad colder in winter, more rain for sure, 35 inches a year compared to the 12 inches for SD and snow averages maybe 1 inch. 

Perfect!

Not too hot, not too cold, cost of living is a bit lower than average for the US and slightly higher than the average for Oregon. Let me tell you trying to find the actual base charges for electricity, sewer and water was a chore. Then there's the difference between rural and city, which I still need to figure out where my preferred location is considered. I'm thinking rural but it's actually a suburb that on a map is technically not in the actual city boundaries. So kind of confusing.

I've just spent the last several hours looking all this stuff up while doing other things. Have to consider all the tiny details like, we'll need a hotel room/apartment before we actually move in depending on whether the current owners are still there. The second place I mentioned was empty so even with that, can't sleep on the floor. We might have to plan a trip up there as well and that costs money we don't have.

When we were homeless a friend was sending me $400 every other week for our 'nest egg'. We never asked for it and thanked her as humbly and profusely as I could at the time. Unfortunately I told her we had to use that money for hotels to stay in, if we hadn't needed that we would be set for moving money. I can't moan about it, we needed it at the time and are thankful we had a very generous friend to help us when we needed it. She was also sending us 'tiny house' ideas and as cute as that is, it's a trailer or a shed in someone's yard. I am thankful she sent us the money but we aren't tiny house people.

I filled out a form online to see what rates were good for a mortgage on a site that I thought was for mobile homes. A guy called this morning, the connection was bad so he said he would call back later.. Well phone came up with the number again and I answered and it was a woman. I mentioned that she was different than the guy that called me in the morning so she started going through her spiel and when she got to the part about not funding mobile homes I stopped her. I'm in the market for a mobile home, 'okay thank you for you time have a nice day' and she hung up.  Alrighty then, not going to to deal with First Step Mortgage again thankfully.

So I'll try and do all the steps necessary for getting pre-approved, (already discovered that my credit score is higher than what the USDA loans require for minimum, yay!) Likely have to take some First Time Homebuyer classes that are required and try to find a lender that's in that area as well. 

Then there's the extra $4-$5k we need just for the logistics of moving. GoFundMe? PaypalMe? I have actually brought up the topic softly to Jon that he has a lot of things that would fetch half that at least and need to weigh collectibles that he can boast about or a house he can boast about. He has watches that go for a few hundred dollars a piece..but getting him to part with them is the problem. I'm going to keep niggling him since we're going to storage tomorrow (he wasn't feeling good today, had some bad milk yesterday morning) and see what we have that can be sold. Other than furniture and beds I got nothing else, fabric, books, music albums I can part with things like that easily but they're not big number items.

The path goes ever forward to the goal we have set.