I have been working with my company since the summer after my sophomore year of college. I was hired on full time directly after graduation. The company was a 60 mile drive from my parents house and I could not drive that distance much more if I wanted to keep my sanity. So I decided to get an apartment in the area once I received my first salaried paycheck.

...

Eight months later I began to realize that the house market would be recovering soon. I already hated paying rent because I saw it as throwing away money with nothing in return. I decided to start looking at realtor.com for a house. Before I knew it I had a Realtor setting up viewings for me. I wasn't sure who was more motivated, the Realtor or me. The homes I was interested in were not what I expected, for loss of better words. I had a very low budget range (my father taught me to be cheap :-) ) and I knew I would be getting a fixer upper. I was okay with that because I wanted to make the house mine. I wanted to put my blood, sweat and tears into my house. The problem is I could only put down a 5% down payment. This limited me to homes that were livable with no major defects.

During the house hunt I came across houses that smelled entirely of cat piss, houses that appeared to contain a dead body in the basement freezer, houses that looked to be built by amateurs, the list goes on. By the time I finally found a house that didn't give me the creeps I was ready to jump right into purchasing it. The house I found was close to a lake and had a nice layout. I showed my family the house, but they did not approve. The problem was that it had no garage and a very small yard. I love to work outside and having no yard would have been very disappointing, but at the time I was so happy to find a decent house near lakes that I just wanted to move on with it. At his point I had already put an offer on the house, and it was accepted!! I rushed into a house inspection and was eager for the results. In the meantime I talked with family more. They turned my opinion around saying I could find something better. Being a young man part of me wanted to prove my family wrong. But the rest of me didn't want an "I told you so" situation. So, when I got the house inspection results I used it as an excuse to back out of my offer. There was no central AC and the furnace/water heater were at end of life, which I honestly didn't want to deal with.

I walked away...