Buying a First Home, An Update: Not Knowing About Things

See that picture, to the right?  In about two months, that's gonna be my kitchen.  When I wake up on a Sunday morning craving a Western omelet, I am going to make a Western omelet on that stove.  When I need to wash dishes, I'll wash dishes in that sink; when I make meat loaf, it'll be in that oven; and when I want to have a cold beer after a hard day's work, I'll grab one out of that stainless steel fridge*, sit in one of those chairs* on that center island, and sip it slowly.

*NOTE: The stainless steel fridge and chairs are not included in sale.

Earlier this week, our home buying finished attorney review, which essentially means that - barring a rare, unforeseen circumstance - we'll be able to move into our first "adult" home some time around mid-May.  Of course, when I use terms like "rare" and "unforeseen," I don't quite know what I'm talking about, because I am a first-time home buyer, and my role is to get f**ked over completely unawares to how, why, and with what instrument.

As far as I can tell, here are the steps in the home buying process (h/t to The Oatmeal for graphical analogy):

Step 1: Decide to buy a home.
 
This could be motivated by a number of reasons, be they financial, emotional, or some combination of the two. For us, we were tired of apartment living because (a) we wanted "our own" space; (b) we didn't want to be transient and shiftless any more; and (c) we were tired of having a washer and dryer in our kitchen. (No, seriously, we have a washer and dryer in our kitchen in our current apartment.)

So in this phase, you align yourself with a realtor and look at houses.  Some realtors tell you that you only need to look at a small number of houses; thankfully, ours let us look at about thirty-five of them before we found "the one."  Perhaps this was just a function of the buyer's market, or perhaps she found our quirkiness endearing, but regardless, we did find "the one" - eventually.  It took two months.

Step 2: Create a short list, call in reinforcements... err, your parents.

Our "the one" was a throw in.  We had an original short list, and when you have a short list, you should look for a second opinion.  We brought in our parents that weekend, and we threw "the one" onto our list of houses to look at at the very last minute, because it just came on the market and the pictures looked cool.

After a rather up-and-down experience with our original short list, we walked into "the one" and we immediately flipped out.  No, actually, our parents flipped out.  At one point, my mother was gushing so effusively about the home (the owners were still there) that I had to take her aside and say "Mom, you might be costing us a lot of money right now!".

This was on a Saturday, and it was our first look.  We came back the very next day, and the next day after that, we met at our realtor's office and made an offer.

Step 3: Make an offer.

If you've ever seen one of those HGTV "First-time Homebuyer" shows (and, sadly, I have), you think that making an offer on a house is a dramatic process.  You'd think that you make your offer, your realtor leaves the room and calls the selling realtor, and within thirty minutes or maybe an hour you'd have a deal.  And for all I know, back in 2006 when real estate was a hot commodity, it was indeed a process just like this.

But if your experience was anything like ours, it was the most anticlimactic thing ever.  You'll sign a shit-ton of paperwork - all of which will eventually get amended, revised, or completely canceled - you'll leave, and you'll wait.  In our case, we waited about a week for our contract to be accepted.  Our sellers took their time (for good reason, actually), and were honest (we believe) throughout the entire process.  You need to have that trust, and to obtain that trust, you need a realtor who's willing to ask the tough questions.  Thankfully, ours was/remains very tough.

Step 4: Offer accepted (conditionally); time to bring in the lawyers and learn why everyone hates attorneys.

Once our offer was signed, it goes into attorney review.  In New Jersey, that's a mandated time period consisting of at least three business days (ours took ten) where your lawyer and the seller's lawyer work out the minutia and negotiate in order to facilitate what, in theory, should be a fairly seamless transaction.

I'll admit here that although I am not a lawyer, I find the law quite fascinating and I saw this as a unique opportunity to understand an aspect of the law I had never been exposed to.  I ended up so disillusioned with the very idea of real estate law that I never want to work with an attorney again, under any set of circumstances, ever.  And, we're two months ahead of closing.  Woohoo!

Here's what you can expect from your attorney:

• You'll hear one price, and then be charged another, and the second price will be higher.  (In fact, this is fairly common around all aspects of real estate; we learned a valuable, $100 lesson here - ALWAYS get an estimate in writing ahead of time.)
• Responses to your queries that serve his/her best interests in getting the deal done; not your best interests as the client.  The lesson here: always ask for the documentation supporting their decision.  You may find that you don't agree with their conclusion, at which point you should speak up.
• No straight answers (which is related to the bullet point immediately above).  In grad school, you learn to respond to things as succinctly and directly as possible.  At times, I am too direct.  But had I gone to law school instead, I would have learned to be evasive and to use such ambiguous, non-committal language that no real conclusion could be drawn from the words I chose.  It really upsets me that this skill is considered two times (at least) more valuable by the economic marketplace, vs. my own.  Mine is more challenging!

Next Steps: Applying for a mortgage; home inspection.

We haven't done these yet, but this is what's next.  Soon, we'll learn what it's like to be screwed over by a lending institution, which should be fun.

Realize that I'm not yet jaded about owning a home; simply the process involved in buying one.  I can't wait to sit on my patio, smoke a cigar and drink a beer on the night that I move in.  Having said that, it's an exhausting amount of back and forth, and what I think we didn't realize when we got started was just how much effort it takes to keep all of these vendors talking to one another.  Combining this with wedding planning, it's a lot.  But we'll pull through.

Updates to come in the weeks ahead...