OUR HOMEBUYING JOURNEY

This feels absolutely insane to write, but as of November 01, I officially became a homeowner!

Now when I say ‘I’, by no means did I do this alone; this place will be home for myself, Stephanie, my boyfriend James, and our adorable kitty Maisie. We had the most incredible realtor and our lovely parents assisting us during the hunt, the help of a great mortgage agent, and our family and friends who were the best support system and sounding boards when we needed them. So, while this will be a lengthy first blog post, I wanted to write about our first-time homebuying journey to get the experience out of my brain, talk about the real estate market we faced while house hunting, and the types of places we viewed before finding The One. In my personal experience online, I’ve seen people celebrating their home purchase, but not necessarily sharing the journey it took to get there. I know this is very personal and unique to each buyer, but as there is a lot of discontent and uncertainty towards the current housing market, I hope by talking about my experience it can help others who dream of buying but may not know where or how to start.

I realize we are in a VERY fortunate position considering the times. We are both 28, and not everyone in our generation can afford to buy, or even rent for that matter, a place they can call home. We are currently living through the COVID-19 pandemic and as of the second quarter of 2021, housing affordability worsened by its widest margin in 27 years (Canadian Mortgage Trends). The bidding process was nothing short of insane: showings for places you are interested in are scheduled in only 30-minute increments (though you can block out more time or showings if you get in early enough), which doesn’t leave a lot of time to do all the investigating you want and need to feel comfortable proceeding with an offer. Decent houses are on the market barely a week before being sold. It was not uncommon to hear of houses in our area selling +$80k over the asking price, usually priced “low” (in this current market anyway) to generate blind bidding wars where absolutely nobody knows what they’re doing, an experience I equated to jumping off a cliff and hoping there’s no rocks at the bottom.

While things calmed down slightly in the summer, the mentality of going in hot on an offer had yet to truly subside by the fall. The only strategy available was to present your absolute maximum over asking you are willing to offer on a property, because anything less will immediately put you out of the running. Most listings marketed to “First-Time Homebuyers” are +$200k over what they were worth just a few years ago, which is causing a lot of people to give up their dream of buying a home entirely. Oh, ALSO, forget about putting conditions on your offers. Once seen as a sensible thing to make your offer conditional upon a home inspection and making sure your financing is in order is now seen as a weakness, or not a ‘serious’ bid. Instead, the buyer is expected to go in blind and offer tens of thousands of dollars over already inflated asking prices to even be considered as a viable bidder. Most of us don't even have that kind of money, and not everyone is able to rely on gifted finances from family to make it work.

All this to say: the fact that we were even able to consider buying a house during this market is not the norm and while the process could be frustrating at times, we understand we are truly in a very fortunate place. But our journey to becoming homeowners didn’t happen overnight!

GETTING STARTED

Since 2019, we had been living in a basement apartment near where James works and where I went to school, as it was convenient for us at the time. Earlier that year, James and I had met with a mortgage agent, one of my former co-workers at the brokerage I used to work at, to get an idea of where we were at financially on the road to owning a home. This was pre-COVID, and nobody knew how things were going to change but by this point prices were already starting to creep up. My co-worker gave us a ballpark range of what we could afford based on our incomes, what liabilities we had, and what we had already saved up- which was quite a bit by that point as we were both saving aggressively for when we felt we were ready to consider buying. We left that meeting feeling confident but when I decided to go back to school for Interior Decorating, we switched gears and decided to rent until we could revisit buying after I graduated and could get a full-time job in my new field. When the pandemic hit and we began working and studying remotely, we very quickly realized this was not the location for us and wanted more than anything to move back to our hometown. It’s only about 20 minutes away from our old apartment but our lives outside of work, our families and close friends, and our sports/hobbies are there. It’s where we intend to continue our lives together and eventually raise a family.

At the beginning of June of this year I reached out to a local realtor and family friend, who was a big help to both of my parents with house hunting over the years, asking to meet up to get some information and advice on what we were going to be up against. We chatted for about an hour about the market, what we were looking for in a home, and when we were hoping to start looking. In any other situation, she would have encouraged us to go to as many open houses as we could, but the pandemic eliminated that option for us. We were connected to a portal with listings in the range and area we were looking for and encouraged to ask her to be shown houses to get a feel for the process. We then met again the following week with our mortgage agent and found we were in an even better financial position now than we were two years ago based on our incomes, what we had already saved up, and what liabilities we had. We were then given the go ahead to officially start house hunting.

Taking this step to meet with a realtor and mortgage broker BEFORE beginning to look for a home was the most crucial of the whole process, because it allowed us to gather important information about the market and our personal finances beforehand and immediately allowed us to narrow down our search to our price point. We were also provided more resources regarding listings than would have been available to us had we began searching on our own.

THE SHOPPING JOURNEY

The experience overall, while fast-paced and sometimes frustrating, was ultimately a good one. We very much felt like we were allowed to proceed with house-hunting at our own pace, thanks to our amazing realtor, and the fact that we didn’t need to rush to leave our apartment. To keep on top of things and keep perspective while shopping, I kept a list of all properties we had gone to showings for, put in offers on, or were otherwise curious of their listing vs. selling prices. A big hurdle to cross right off the bat was lamenting over the "before times,” ending every showing with a rant about the current housing market and how none of the houses are worth what they are being listed for. While all valid, we realized this did us no favours. We learned we had to accept the market as is, because the likelihood of it going back to how it was is very slim, and we had to either dive completely in or stop looking all together.

We saw a few houses which looked promising from the first showing, but upon a second showing revealed a lot of “red flag: don’t-touch-this-with-a-ten-foot-pole” kind of issues. One house was clearly a flip (something we were VERY weary of) and, while it LOOKED nice, the basement revealed an entire support joist missing from a very crucial part of the structure, shoddy electrical work, and even a drainpipe from the kitchen which had been forced on top of another pipe, so it slanted UPWARDS (!?) in one spot. Another house out in the country had shoddy DIY work, a cracked foundation, and had a garage with a flat roof that, when looking out the second-floor window, had clear signs of water damage and warping on the roof due to the lack of slope. Situations like this are why it was so important to us from the get-go to have a realtor who was also actively looking for these issues with us, rather than simply trying to push us for a sale.

We also had some houses which checked almost every box on our checklist and had a lot of potential for growth, but ultimately didn’t pan out. There were certainly a few heartbreakers in there, but it all ultimately led to the place we eventually found. As we gained more experience with the offer process, we learned to become more aggressive: we would submit our maximum price, offer quick closing dates (if possible), send in offer letters if the situation called for it, upped our deposit, and learned to go in with no conditions- anything to make our offer more appealing. For one house we didn't feel comfortable putting an offer in without an inspection, we scheduled it in the time before offers were due so we had a good idea of what condition the house was in before proceeding. I remember I would wake up panicking the mornings offers were due because we had sent in a price and had no idea if it was too low or way too high. It was an absolutely maddening process.

The morning we toured the home we ended up buying, there was also another the next street over which had popped up on the market the evening before. It was listed at a ridiculously low price, so we knew the selling agent was looking to generate a bidding war. We toured and liked both, though I was more partial to the one we ultimately got. We were prepared to put a pre-emptive offer in on the other because there was no offer day listed but as I drove to work, our realtor called to let us know a pre-emptive offer had already gone in on the other house and offers were being presented at noon, less than 3 hours after we had toured the home. After a lot of phone calls back and forth and throwing an offer together, within a few hours we were told we were unsuccessful in our bid. The house hadn’t been on the market 24 hours and sold for +$300k over asking.

We also prepared a pre-emptive offer for the one we ended up getting, but again were told another offer had already gone in first, though this time there was a mandatory 48-hr window for other offers to be submitted. I had already resigned myself to the fact that we wouldn’t get it, but a few hours after offer submission our realtor called to let us know there were 3 identical offers and, for the first time during our homebuying journey, we were given the opportunity to re-submit. Naturally, we had no idea if the other offers resubmitted, nor what price they were going to submit, so we just had to go with our gut. We ultimately ended up having to go over what we had set as our 'limit' for buying and, yes, ended up having to get some financial assistance to ensure we could comfortably put down 20% as a down payment to avoid insurance premiums. This was an extremely bitter pill to swallow, as we wanted nothing more than to do this on our own. The reality is: in any other market, we could have, but with the current situation it would not have been possible to get the place we ended up getting. Given the neighbourhood the property was in we knew this house, over the others we had toured, would be a good investment for us and was worth it. It was an excruciating wait but an unreal feeling finally getting the call saying the house was ours; I immediately broke down and even our realtor was choked up. We called our parents immediately and there were a lot of screams and cheers all around. I’ll never forget it.

WHAT’S UP NEXT

So now we’re here!

We took the first week of November off from work after getting our keys- it’s not like we were travelling anywhere now, so we figured this was the best way to use our vacation time. We took the week to paint (and paint and paint) and get the house prepped for moving in. We've been spending our evenings and weekends installing closet inserts, cleaning the house, changing out lights and outlets, along with some other exciting projects. We've been very fortunate to have time between getting possession and moving out of our rental on November 30, so we're going full steam ahead on some fun changes!

We have some really great ideas for room makeovers and renovations, and I’m really looking forward to sharing our journey! It was a whirlwind getting here, but we're so thankful to have found a place of our own.

Thanks for reading! (For real, this was a lot.)