A House

One thing I promised myself when I restarted this foreign service quest was that I would try to live my life normally, as if my dream job would never materialize. The process is such a long one, especially if you are blocked at any of the stops along the way, and there are so many stops: the test, the QEP, the oral assessment, the background check, and then the register. Even if you sail through each one, the process will still take a year or more to complete. So, I'm trying hard not to make decisions based on the possibility that I'll enter the foreign service one day and everything will change.

And that explains why we're currently in the process of buying a house. To be honest, buying a house right now is crazy even when you take the foreign service out of the equation. We just moved back to Dallas about three months ago, and we're in a one-year lease at our current place. I haven't even received a full paycheck yet, and we're still paying off the debts we accumulated from living in the Rio Grande Valley without steady work for several months, and then the cost of moving up here. The timing couldn't be worse, really, but Michael spends so much time on real estate websites that I guess it was inevitable that we should buy something at the first opportunity.

In short, we decided to find an income property because it allows us to buy in an area we otherwise wouldn't be able to afford, while also making a lot of sense for us financially. After looking at a few places, our agent, who's the partner of one of Michael's friends from high school, showed us a place that never even made it on the market before we snatched it up: a duplex with two 3-bed, 2-bath units in Winnetka Heights, a nationally-registered historic district in Oak Cliff. Oak Cliff is an area just south of downtown that's been undergoing tremendous changes over the past few years, and it's actually the area where we lived when we first moved to Dallas together. We've always wanted to buy there, and I feel like this property is going to be a fantastic investment. And since the bottom unit is already being rented out, it's generating enough income to cover the bulk of the monthly mortgage payments.

We've had to borrow a lot of money from my parents to cover the down payment, and we're definitely going to be scraping by for a while, especially if our current landlord refuses to let us sublet or we have difficulty finding a willing sublet-er. Things could be rough until next July. In the long run, though, I think we're going to be much better off after making this purchase than we were before. Even if I manage to make it into the foreign service in the next couple of years, this property can pay for itself while we're abroad. In fact, it could even generate some extra income for us, especially if Oak Cliff continues to develop the way it has been for the past few years.

Our closing date is October 31st, and according to the rules of the FHA loan, we have 60 days after that to occupy the premises, which means we'll be moving again sometime in November or December. Things have calmed down somewhat at work, and the holiday season is full of time off for teachers, so I think we'll be able to manage this transition without going crazy.