Last week, we made our first actual bid on a house, and boy, was it a roller-coaster ride. Up until then, we had been browsing Redfin and MLS listings, looking at open houses in the area and not really seeing anything we liked or that was remotely within our price range.

Then we happened across a house in a neighborhood we hadn’t been considering. It was as close to what we were ideally looking for as we had seen, and it didn’t need any obvious changes or upgrades. Believe it or not, that’s rare on the Peninsula. For readers who are unfamiliar with Bay Area housing, you just have to trust me on this one. It’s been a shock to understand just what sort of housing inventory and pricing there is around here, even in a “down economy”.

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Thanks to our nascent house hunt, I’ve been trying to back into figures on mortgages and monthly payments. Luckily, Excel has a handy built-in amortization template just perfectly suited for this purpose.

Here’s how you get to the template in Excel 2007 (which according to my recent poll is the version most readers use, if only by a hair).

In Excel 2007, go to the “menu” button (the goofy-looking windows symbol in a circle) in the upper left-hand corner. Click on “New”. This will bring up the following window:

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According to its description, 'needs work...but great value!' in Burlingame, CA, priced at $1.05M

We’re a few weeks into seriously starting to look at the Bay Area housing market (as in actually going to open houses and going on trips with our real estate agent to get to know neighborhoods).

Although we’re starting to get a bit more accustomed to prices of houses in the area, I still can’t get my head around the idea that a basic 3bd/2ba house will likely cost nearly $1M. These are houses that would run in the low hundred thousands anywhere else, let alone in Tennessee, where I spent most of my childhood.

We’re basically looking for a solid house that will retain (or possibly even appreciate) in value over time and that doesn’t involve an unreasonable commute time to my work; nothing fancy, and we don’t even care if it’s new, although not having to cross the Bay every day would be nice.

Here’s what I’ve been able to pick up so far from our trips:
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