It’s Baby Month
It’s officially due date month! My doctor said to keep walking and moving around to help get baby ready. I’ve been trying to take Jeter for a walk every day, but the heat is brutal. Early morning and late in the day are the only options right now. And even then, I’m only going about half a mile before I get too winded and my hands and feet start swelling up. My husband and I did go for a mile-long walk on the weekend and when we got home I had a little bit of a Violet Beauregarde from Willy Wonka situation. So, the end of pregnancy is going about as expected…
The repressive heat we have been having has kept us inside most of the day though. After that long walk, we decided the rest of the day was movie day so I could lay on the couch in the air conditioning. I’m still trying to find the right balance between exercising outside and staying out of the heat.
On a better note, since we have been in our house for about a year now, I wanted to look back and share some of our first-time home buyer story and reflections on the process. I will say that overall we are very happy with the house we ended up in, but it was not an easy journey.
Our Home Buying Story
Since we were moving from New York City out to the suburbs of New Jersey, we started looking about 8 months before our lease was up. We hadn’t really been out to NJ to see different towns so we did a lot of initial research online to narrow it down. We also talked to people who lived in the area. Once we had narrowed down the list, we went out and met with our realtor to see some homes and get an idea of realistically what we should be looking for.
We also talked to our regular bank to see what we could get preapproved for as well as another bank that seemed to have the lowest rates around. Turns out loyalty doesn’t get you very far in the mortgage arena and we ended up going with the other bank because they could do better on the rates. That was a big surprise to Andrew and to me: aren’t banks missing an opportunity by not making themselves a one-stop-shop as well as making the barrier to exit for the consumer even more complicated? If I have my checking, savings, mortgage, and maybe a personal loan or something else all with one bank, how likely is it that I would move, so I don’t understand why our existing bank couldn’t offer better terms.
Getting preapproved was a must for us because we were headed into a tough market and needed to be able to lay that card on the table with our offer. It only took a short phone call with each bank to get a preapproval letter so I feel like it’s a no brainer if you are going to start house hunting. And our realtor highly recommended it as well. We also wrote a letter that would go with each offer that talked about our story and why we were looking to move and buy a house (you know young married couple wanting some space from the city and to have dog and start a family…check and check). Can’t hurt to have things ready to go!
The Real Search Begins
In January we started seriously looking as our lease was up at end of April. We found a house in a town we really liked early on, but it needed some work. We felt that it was manageable, so we made an offer and started down the process. The first step once they accepted was the home inspection because that wasn’t a contingency we were willing to give up. We did it on all the homes we made offers on because if there was something big wrong, we wanted to know about it beforehand.
Unluckily for us, the first house had structural issues and the seller wasn’t willing to do anything from the home inspection report or with the structural issue. She was very difficult to work with and apparently her own attorney had fired her multiple times before when trying to sell this house.
That’s one of the variables you don’t hear enough about in the buying and selling a home process: emotions matter and there’s no way to know what they will be beforehand. Andrew had a practice home buying negotiation during one of his MBA negotiation courses that ended in no deal, even though Andrew’s offer as the buyer was within the acceptable range the seller could take. The lesson from this exercise according to the professor? “People get emotional and irrational about selling their houses because they view their homes as being in better shape than they actually are and want to feel they receive value for giving up a valuable asset with years of memories.” I think his professor was spot-on there!
With all of that we decided to pull our offer and keep looking. It was hard to have all of that happen on the first go around and for a house we really liked. We also had spent money on the home inspection, tank sweep and structural engineer. It was painful to see that amount of money just gone and with us having nothing to show for it.
Since that ended so poorly, we extended our lease one month until the end of May to buy us some more time since there weren’t a lot of quality homes on the market in the winter in NJ (there were homes, just the bottom of the barrel ones). Surprise, people don’t really want to move when there is snow on the ground and in the middle of a school year.
The Search Continues
Despite that first hurdle, we kept looking for homes. I was on Zillow daily keeping an eye on things and Google Mapping and Street Viewing homes that were on the market. I will say, that we were looking for homes in a tough market. Since both of us work in the city, we wanted to be in a town with a train line to make commuting easier. That instantly makes home prices higher, but it was a tradeoff we were willing to make. It also makes the towns more desirable in general and with good schools. Yes, we wanted to check all the boxes.
We continued to come out to the suburbs on weekends to go to open houses. Our goal was to see 5-8 houses when we would come out and hope that one was going to be our house. We made offers on 5 houses getting out-bid every time. And we were making offers with recommendations from our realtor and that were frequently over ask. It was tough too because after the weekend open house, there would be multiple offers and the selling realtor would say to submit best and final all at once, so you were just guessing and hoping that yours would do the trick. There wasn’t even any possibility for negotiation. It was either your got it or you didn’t.
Someone Just Take Our Money!
We were getting worried then luck finally broke our way. After one trip out our realtor told us that she knew the selling realtor of one house that we had liked. Our realtor talked to the selling realtor said that if we could make a full price offer and sign contract that night then they wouldn’t have the open house the next day.
We made the full price offer (which we were willing to make, and actually felt like we were getting a better deal) and then went into some negotiations. The issue that came up was that the seller wasn’t closing on their new house until the end of June, but we needed to move in at the end of May. Luckily, she came off the price a few thousand dollars to essential allow us to cover “rent” somewhere for that month we would otherwise be homeless.
Because we couldn’t stay in our apartment, we ended up boxing up most of our stuff and renting a storage unit near the new house. We lived with Andrew’s parents in the city for the month of June until we closed. We are lucky that we had a place to stay and family that welcomed us, but it didn’t come without obstacles. Their apartment still has his and his sister’s rooms set up just like there were when they both lived at home, meaning a twin bed in each room. So, my husband and I slept in twin beds in separate rooms for a month. Not exactly an ideal situation for a married couple but we didn’t really have a choice.
The Actual Mortgage Process
During the time from our offer being accepted to closing, we worked with our mortgage broker and her team to get all the documents they needed and with the attorney’s office to get things done there as well. Being a type-A super-organized person came in handy at this point. The mortgage team always seemed to need some sort of document or statement. Because of my job, I can easily get all the necessary documents for our financial life. We also scanned our last 2 years of tax returns, year-end paystubs, most recent paystubs and some other important documents so that we would have them ready to go when needed. There are plenty of lists online of documents that may be needed for a mortgage, so it was helpful to have PDF copies at the ready.
We wanted to make sure that we were never the holdup on the mortgage so that things went smoothly. Being able to access all our various accounts online was super helpful. Don’t be the person that’s sitting waiting for a bank statement or account statement to show up in the mail. I feel like most banks and financial institutions these days have some sort of online portal you can use to access things.
We stayed on top of our email and made sure to CC the appropriate parties to keep everyone in the loop and follow up to make sure everyone was meeting the deadlines they needed to. This is the time you need to be your own best advocate. Don’t rely on anyone else to make sure things are done in time. If you want to close on that house, then you need to stay in charge of the situation.
Closing Time, One More Call for Alcohol (Because Buying a House is Stressful)
We finally closed at the end of June 2017 and had ordered our mattress and scheduled for it to be delivered that afternoon so we could stay in the house. That week, we slept on the mattress on the floor and slowly started to take things out of our storage unit a few boxes at a time. Yes, we were that desperate to live in our new house that we slept on the mattress on the floor with no furniture in the house.
All the upstairs bedrooms had carpet in them that was disgusting. The prior owner had multiple pets including cats which Andrew is allergic to, so we ended up ripping up the carpet around the bed in the master bedroom the third day in the house. It was that bad. And I had vacuumed multiple times, but I don’t think I could have vacuumed enough to get all the dirt out of the carpet.
But we were able to live in our new house and that is what mattered that week. We did all the hard work to get to that point, that we were going to stay there no matter what!
What Would We Have Changed?
Looking back, there are a few things that we could have done differently, or I wish we could have done differently. I think we would have extended our lease 2 months instead of 1 if we had known how tough the market really was. Our realtor could have advised us better on that one.
I wish we could have gone and seen houses at times besides just the open houses. It made it difficult to really talk about how we felt about each house when there were 15 other people walking around.
We weren’t afraid of doing some work on the house, so we kept our options open there but it was a seller’s market. We saw a lot of houses built in the late 50s-early 60s with original kitchens and bathrooms that needed upgrades. It seems like our area of NJ is undergoing a major shift in population with older homeowners selling and moving out of the homes they have lived in since they were built and younger couples and families moving in. It’s nice to see houses being fixed up but there is still a lot of pastel tile out there. Can anyone explain why people like the colorful tiles in the 60s? The Pepto Bismol pink bathroom including tile, shower, toilet and sink is just too much!
I think we ended up in the house that was right for us, but it was a stressful process. There really wasn’t much we could do about a lot of things. It’s a desirable area in NJ for commuters with the train station and it has a great school district. Those things make it popular and competitive. We did end up with our slice of the suburbs, white picket fence and all (well, one side of the yard has white fencing, the other is chain link…it’s on the to do list to replace it so they match). Can’t get everything but we got most of what we wanted and have a place to start our family which is most important!