Well, it's official. As of May 15, 2017, my wife and are have become home owners. We've agreed to be indebted for the next 30 years of our lives to have a building that belongs to us (well, to the bank, but they won't interfere with our ownership claims so long as we pay them).
I know it's been quite a while since my last post. I've...grown tired of politics of late and no longer had the wherewithal to upkeep that portion of my blog. My personal desires to do things that used to occupy my time seems...low to say the least. Reading has been difficult for the last year or so, and writing basically impossible. But this is a topic that I wanted to share with...well, whoever actually might care to read this. I doubt very many.
Our process was more complicated than I had imagined. We had to find an agent to represent us (though what all she actually did is arguable - more on that later). We visited several open houses for the express purpose of meeting agents. That bit of advice, by the way, was incredibly wise and I really need to thank my old coworker and still friend, Lisa, for giving that to me. Megan and I had no idea how to even begin the process and Lisa told us our best bet would be to meet with several agents and find one that fit our personalities.
We found two, interviewed both, then chose the one with more experience and who seemed like she was going to be a better fit for us. Lisa (our agent, I know, too many Lisa's), turned out to be very knowledgeable and really tried to prepare us for the process that turned out to be much more complicated than I would have imagined.
Counting the open houses we viewed to meet agents, we saw roughly a dozen houses, give or take one or two. I lost count. We viewed numerous homes online through various apps and web services, but, I'll be honest, the people who take those photos do a really good job of showing off the best parts of the house and leaving out the worst parts. We had ideas as to where we wanted to end up, and we didn't exactly end up where we wanted (more on that later). We had ideas on how much we wanted to spend, and we ended up spending the very top of our budget (of course) instead of the mid-range where I'd have rather been.
I had some qualms with the way things were handled when we found homes we liked. For starters, "the market" seemed to heat up just as we were getting to the point where we were finding houses we were interested in and we could afford to make offers on. Three or four houses that we wanted to see were under contract within four days of being put on the market, and we weren't even able to see them. We finally found a house that had been on the market for some time, and had just come down in price into our range, that, as soon as we put an offer on it, multiple other people put in offers as well. Granted, given what we ended up with, I'm much happier with this house than I would have been with that one, but the process was very opaque and, frankly, upsetting.
We put in our bid (and due to the way things went with our agent, this took a bit longer than it probably should have), and the next day were told that someone else had made a very similar bid and they wanted us to put in a new, higher bid (of course). Now, I didn't actually get to speak with the sellers, or even the sellers' agent. I was hearing all of this second/third hand through our agent, who heard it from the sellers' agent, presumably. Then we made another bid, then a third, before finally being told we were "outbid." Based on what I bid, I'm guessing the seller made more money by lowering the price of their house than they would have if someone had made an offer while the price was still higher. Anyhow, what bugged me about this is that I'm good at negotiating; I do it for a living. Yet, due to all the third parties involved, I couldn't seem to make any headway as to whether what I was offering was getting me anywhere, or if the seller (or one of the agents) was just trying to bid up the price.
The second house we found that we were willing to put in an offer on was even nicer. It was in an ideal location for us and was, structurally speaking, the nicest house we looked at in our search. The process here was a lot shittier than before (excuse the curse, I am still upset about it). We had learned our lesson from missing out on seeing potential homes, so we decided to go see this house the very day it was listed. We actually got there before the sign was up, even before the lock box had been put on the door. We were the first people by at least 16 hours to view the home. Now, I had some problems with the home, but I was willing to overlook them given all the positives and the fact that this home seemed to be way under-priced for that location/size/etc, so after a bit of waffling, Megan convinced me that we should make an offer.
Given that we were submitting our offer twelve hours before anyone else would even see the house, I felt safe in making a bid that I was comfortable with, but Lisa and Megan talked me up to more than I thought was reasonable for a first bid. I was already uncomfortable with that when Lisa came back with what was probably the shittiest part of this who experience: the seller agent was going to ignore our bid until four other couples had the chance to see the house the next day, essentially breaking the law and putting off our bid for 48 hours instead of responding in the requisite 24. Right then I should have withdrawn my bid and walked away. Instead, Megan and Lisa talked me into increasing the bid. I'm now officially over-budget on this bid, but, in this case I had met the family selling the home and I felt good about having had the opportunity to meet them and discuss our situation with them and I thought we had a good chance. We were rejected pretty much straight away. Not even given the chance to make another bid (which I wouldn't have done, anyhow, but it felt shitty to not even get the chance), which meant the family walked away with 10% more, minimum, than they had listed the house for, and I walked away with a really bad taste in my mouth.
Well, it took a few more weeks and three or four more viewings till we found our current home, and even here, the bidding process was opaque and annoying. We went in with a bid that I was comfortable with on a home that had been on the market for seven months and had already been rejected by one family that had started the contract process then walked away. There was no talk of other bids, so we decided to not bid straight away but take it home and mull it over. About eight hours after we saw the house, after talking with our families, we decided to move forward with a bid that I was comfortable with. Straight away, I was told that another family was interested in the property and would be viewing it the next morning and they were likely to make a bid. Seriously, out of the blue, as soon as I made my offer, that is what Lisa returned to me with. It's like she (or the seller agent) was just trying to get me to increase my bid. The next day "the other family saw the house, loved it, and put in a bid 'similar to mine,'" so I was asked to submit a new bid. I kicked it around a bit because I was seriously starting to think this whole thing was a sham and I didn't know if I wanted to even do this any more, and Megan and I couldn't really afford to go much higher than we had bid the first time. After 45 minutes of discussion between Megan, Lisa, and I, we decided to just max out our budget and hope for the best. It took three more rounds of the seller coming back and asking for more money (at this point we were already offering more than what they had the house currently listed at, so there was no way in hell I was going to give a penny more), before Lisa finally had the thought to tell them we were a "young couple looking for a place to start a family." The sellers were an older couple moving away for retirement in warmer climes, so this argument got them to cave and sell the house.
The rest of the process was just a month of calling people, signing papers, and spending way more money on things like appraisals and second appraisals and radon reduction systems than I would have ever thought possible. Finally we came to the closing table, gave away a check for the last of the money in our savings account, and got the keys to our new home.
Now, I don't want to make this seem like I'm not happy with my new home; I'm ecstatic. I love the neighborhood, and the house is pretty perfect for us. We already had our entire families over for a picnic this past Monday for Memorial Day and everyone fit and there was plenty of space to spread out and run around and otherwise have a good time. The process, however, left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I don't know if I'll ever want to do it again. If I do, I might go out as an individual and find a for sale by owner home.
The biggest thing that I can't figure out is why, in this day and age, we need a seller agent and a buyer agent for every transaction. Both of the agents involved made 3% or more in commission, and I honestly can't tell you what our agent did that was really worth that money. Now, I didn't have to pay for either of those commissions; the sellers paid them both. In fact, all told, the sellers paid about three times as much in cash to sell their home than I did to buy it, which I think is more than a bit odd. That doesn't mean I'm not weirded out by how much the agents make for what seems like work that anyone could do on their own. I can't speak to the seller agent here (as she seems to have gone above and beyond for her clients), but I can say that my agent was absent a lot due to some health problems that occurred during our time together, which I felt put us at a disadvantage. She also didn't really seem to do anything that I couldn't have done on my own. She arranged the viewings, but I could have arranged those with the seller agents myself (and, in the case of there not being a seller agent, with the sellers themselves). She communicated our bids to the seller agent and communicated to us what the sellers' thoughts on our bids were, but that process, as I discussed above, was far too opaque for my taste. I would have much preferred sitting in a room or on the phone with the seller directly and coming to an agreement that way. She did provide and walk us through all the legal paperwork garbage that we had to take care of, but, we all know what I think about government paperwork already, and half of that was only necessary because she was representing me as an agent in the first place. Frankly, I could have just hired a lawyer to write a contract for us (or downloaded the ready-made contract that we used in this process) and gone through that process myself. She didn't really recommend any homes for us to see; Megan and I chose the ones we wanted to view from the web services and apps as discussed above. I don't really know where I'm trying to go here other than to say that, given the state of technology today, this whole process seemed to be incredibly dated and unnecessarily complex, and that complexity seemed to favor the agents more than the buyers or the sellers.
Meh, oh well. I'm a homeowner and hopefully I don't have to move again for a very long time. I love my house and can't wait to spend a significant portion of my life here.
I want to add a picture but I can't figure out how right now...
If you actually took the time to read this whole thing, thank you!
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