My wife and I first started looking at houses back in October of 2008. We were casual searchers back then, browsing the occasional open house when it looked enticing enough. We couldn’t really have bought a house at that point though since our lease in our apartment didn’t even end until August 2009, but we thought it’d be good to start learning the ropes.

Turns out we didn’t have to worry about buying a house, because of the eighty or so we’ve seen in person, and the several hundred we’ve seen online, only four have interested us. Yet even of those four, none was a sure bet. The latest one was the closest, but it fell through after a dreadful property inspection. We’re currently in the last steps of the inspection process on a house we really love, but I’m not counting any chickens this time.

Buying a house is absolutely one of the biggest financial challenges I’ve faced. There are so many steps to the process, so many places to go wrong and so many places where understanding the process better or having had access to another resource would have helped immensely.

So I decided to dust off the ol’ personal finance blog and write a series of posts on the home buying experience, starting with figuring out if you can afford a home, and ending with (for the time being) closing the deal.

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: What it Costs to Own a Home