Andrew and I started tossing around the idea of buying a home together in December. At the time I was still living with my parents post-grad school to save money and he was living with his best friend and best friend’s fiancé. Neither one of us liked the idea of getting into a lease. Rent in the areas we were looking, with the space we needed, and the dog fees we would have to pay was just as expensive as a mortgage would be. We wholeheartedly decided that renting was out of the question.
So in mid-January, we took a minor plunge and casually started house-hunting. By mid-February we were full-blown Zillow addicts. It felt like every time we picked up our phones we were looking at a house. We went through a real estate roller coaster trying to find our house style, picking a location we both loved, deciding on whether to build or buy an existing home, falling in love with a house and having it go under contract before we even got home to discuss and then the absolute icing on the cake was COVID-19 hitting the world with stay-at-home orders.
At first, we read a lot about double agency and how it might be beneficial to buy a home without a real estate agent. Double agency is when the buyer is represented by the real estate agent who is also representing the sellers. This usually ends up happening if buyers do not have an agent and the listing agent shows them the house. It could be beneficial for a buyer because the double agent is receiving the full commission on the house that would typically be split between the sellers agent and the buyers agent. Double agency can create a conflict of interest for the agent because they have to try to keep the best interests of the buyers and the sellers in mind, when those interests are complete opposites.
After 2 weekends of driving back and forth from one side of town to the other and homes going off the market before we could schedule to see them, we quickly realized we needed someone to coordinate days of open houses and to get us into these houses ASAP.
It felt like every time we went to an open house we’d find a new real estate agent and somehow get scheduled to see a house or 2 with them. We saw several houses with several different agents, but none of the agents ever really clicked with us. We wanted someone who we got along with, but also that we could feel confident in. We wanted to trust that they could move quickly, help negotiate, and had our best interests at heart.
Besides what we wanted in an agent we had also become pretty firm on what we wanted in a house as well.
We were looking for :
- 3 bedrooms
- 2.5 bathrooms
- Fenced yard
- Hardwood floors throughout downstairs
- 2,000 sq/ft min
- 1/3 acre min
We learned quickly that pictures on Zillow can be deceiving and that a recently renovated house wasn’t synonymous with a quality renovation. We also learned what kind of work we were and weren’t willing to take on. Number one on the NOT willing to take on was popcorn ceiling removal…nope not for us.
To help us narrow things down, I had come up with a rule that we had to like at least 2 out of the 4 major features of the kitchen: floors, cabinets, counters, and backsplash. I intentionally excluded appliances from the list because we had to like those; which for us just meant that they needed to be in good condition and stainless steal.
We understood that without building we wouldn’t get everything exactly how we wanted it, but on closing day I didn’t want to hate a greater percentage of the house than I liked and immediately want to sledgehammer everything. It quickly became abundantly clear that we were not in the market for a fixer upper. Regardless of my unwavering loyalty, love and admiration for Joanna Gaines and her work, we just didn’t have the time to take on a home that needed serious work. In non-corona circumstances, Andrew’s job keeps him traveling 2-3 weeks out of the month and my 9-5 + my photography business doesn’t leave much free time to be ripping out counters and re-tiling showers.
For a solid month we were both really stuck on the idea of building. So much so that we almost put deposits down for lots…twice. Each time we’d be about to leave to drop off the check and something just didn’t feel right. We’d start listing all the things we didn’t like about builder or the neighborhood or the lot. One of us would eventually suggest that we just keep looking and we’d happily go back to the Zillow drawing board.
Then came Corona and as you can imagine, the home buying process became impossible. When stay-at-home orders were put in place we were no longer allowed to tour homes unless we went under contract. After spending months being wooed by carefully crafted real estate photos and then disappointed the minute we rolled up to the catfish home, the thought of going under contract sight unseen absolutely terrified us.
We went back and forth several times, but finally decided that buying a home during a global pandemic and looming recession was not the best decision. We halted our official search and went back to just casually looking on Zillow.
Sometime during our search freeze, vacant homes became acceptable to tour in person while non-vacant homes were still off-limits. Andrew was helping out his best friend who renovates homes for a living when he found several houses in the same neighborhood listed by the same agent. On a whim, he gave her a call and she was able to get us in to see a vacant home that day. She was super easy to work with and also extremely knowledgable about the market. She and her husband had flipped 8 houses so far just this year (keep in mind this was in May) and they were working on their 9th at the time.
Around the same time that Andrew had whimsically called the agent, I had whimsically added a house to our shared saved list on Zillow that I did not think I could even convince Andrew to consider. It was a bit out of our discussed range but was vacant, the perfect size, and in a perfect location for us. I showed him just to see what he thought and he shocked me by absolutely loving it and wanting to go see it. Our agent took us to go see it the same day.
This house had everything on our list of must-haves and even a few extras. After touring it, we were pretty confident about moving forward and making an offer. The house was owned by OfferPad, a company similar to Knock or Zillow, so there was no opportunity to sweeten our offer with a sentimental letter about how much we loved the home, how excited we were to build our lives there, or how we thought the house would bless us in the years to come. All they cared about were the numbers and all we could do was wait.
Buying from a company rather than a person or couple, was different because they were slow to respond (only working on business days), and they were nearly impossible to negotiate with. Thanks to Corona, however, the house had not received a ton of action so we were the only offer which definitely gave us some leverage for negotiation.
After going back and forth for a week, on Friday, May 8th we finally went under contract. We closed on our home in just over 30 days on Monday, June 8th. The month absolutely flew by and before we knew it we were signing papers at the lawyers office and being handed the keys.
It’s been just over 4 months since we closed and I still can’t believe that this is our house. We have been having so much fun making it ours, learning our new routines, and living together as a couple, but more on that in another post.😊
Love always,
