Adam Howitt's Blog

Aug 07
2007

Countdown to Home Ownership

51 days to go until we close on our first home together!  Our offer was accepted yesterday and we're so excited.  My wife and I have been out for marathon househunting sessions each weekend for the last 2 months after getting pre-approved for a mortgage and we finally found one we agreed on.

In other news, I've expressed an interest in running a Chicago Amazon Web Services User Group.  I've been running virtual servers on Amazon's EC2 platform for about 6 months now and all the WalkJogRun images / static files have been served from Amazon S3 for roughly the same period.  I'll be talking about how to get started with both services at CFUnited Express Chicago on the Sunday before MAX (Sept 30th) if anyone wants to learn more and I'm sure I'll be blogging about it a lot in the upcoming months.

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  1. Congratulations dude! That house looks awesome - especially that kitchen (sick!). In my family (growing up) the kitchen was always a central place, so to me, a nice kitchen is so important and comforting.

    I have started saving up for a down payment; hopefully in a few years I can start to look also.

    So you registered anywhere for house warming stuffs ;)

  2. congrats!

    now do yourself a favor and don't be like some of my moron friends, get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage! Don't get an ARM no matter what anyone saids or a 15 year mortgage. Alot of my friends are in trouble right now because they didn't listen 2 years ago and their ARMs matured and they can't make the payment. Same with the 15 year since they doubled the minimum payments on credit cards.

    Do yourself the favor and take the 5 minutes to look at this program: http://www.mortgageaccelerationllc.com/

    I have a 30 year mortgage, been paying it for 3 years now so I have 27 left. Using this program I'll have paid off in 5.5 years instead of the 27.

  3. Thanks guys! Good idea on the housewarming registry - hadn't even thought about that. Thanks for the mortgage tip Tony - we're set with a 30 year fixed so that's cool but I'll check out the site you mentioned. How did you hear about it?

  4. Congrats, and welcome to the world of home "OWErship"...jokes aside, it's a great place to be!

  5. Thanks Joe. At least my rent won't be disappearing into my landlords pocket now and I'll be accumulating equity. That always bugged me but without my green card I don't think it was an option. Now I just need to find a nice looking LCD TV :-)

  6. Hey - congratulations! Looks very cool indeed . . .

  7. Thanks Peter!

  8. my brother is a mortgage broker and he heard about the program when he went to a broker convention. the website is his.

    i heard about the product from him and checked it out, anything I could do pay of my condo faster is fine by me.

    little background: since joining in april i've managed to pay down my mortgage by 10K. not bad at all.

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