House Hunters Pandemic: Part 1
We were sitting in a friend’s backyard (something we were envious of coming from an 800 square foot apartment with two energetic dogs) when we finally decided to take the plunge and start looking at houses. This was May 2020, a couple months into the pandemic, and we were feeling the stress of having to work from home and being cooped up together all day every day. At the time, we had been living in our apartment for a little over a year and had recently re-signed our lease in March to stay another 12 months. Had we known what was about to happen to the world (and exactly how long it would end up lasting) we probably wouldn’t have re-signed our lease. Or at least gone to month-to-month to give ourselves flexibility. Or done literally anything differently than the way we did it. But we were young, naïve, and rightfully terrified of making a ginormous financial commitment in the middle of a global shutdown when unemployment was hitting historic numbers.
So there we were in our friend’s backyard enjoying one of the first nice days of the year when we came across a listing for a house that looked absolutely incredible. Stunning. Perfect. “It’s SO you guys,” our friends encouraged. “It’s SO us,” we echoed as we scrolled through amazing photo after amazing photo. We had seen enough. It was time. We were ready. I texted my buddy who was family friends with a realtor in the area and he put us in touch. We reached out speculatively and made our situation clear: because we had just re-signed our lease, we were only looking for now. The terms of the lease made it to where it would cost ~$5000 to break and we’d much rather put that money toward a down payment later on than light it on fire now and have to drastically lower our budget. (In hindsight we were so so young and so so naïve it’s astounding we were able to function as humans).
Of course, there are always exceptions. Of COURSE we would have to at least CONSIDER breaking our lease if we found the PERFECT home. We didn’t know what that meant yet, but we knew we would know if when we saw it. For instance, if we walked in a house and it had high ceilings with exposed beams and a huge kitchen with a lovely marble island that opened into a gorgeous living space with shiny hardwood floors and the master suite was divine with a large walk in closet and a master bathroom that made the Ritz hang its head in shame and there was a second bedroom to turn into an office and a third bedroom to become our creative muse and maybe a mud room for the dogs and a spacious two car garage (we’d settle for one though, we aren’t that picky) and a charming backyard with luscious green grass and a large deck where we can enjoy our morning coffee on the nice days and maybe a screened in porch, too, to enjoy thunderstorms and a high privacy fence that we could chit chat with our cute neighbors over and perhaps a small shed for extra storage and the foundation was sturdy and the roof was new and the plumbing was right and it was comfortably within our budget. Then we would HAVE to consider breaking our lease. But only then.
We met our realtor at the house with high hopes but low expectations. At least that’s what we were saying aloud. Privately we each couldn’t help but wonder, small whispers in the back of our brains…what if this is this the one?? The photos looked so incredible — maybe it’s meant to be. Maybe we’re really good at this. Maybe we’re the best home buyers of all time.
When we walked inside the house we learned something immediately, which is that real estate photographers are incredible at their jobs. Better at their jobs than anyone else in the world is at their respective jobs. Steve Jobs, who has the word job in his name and was also supremely talented, can’t hold a light to real estate photographers and the job they do. The average real estate photographer is more talented than the greatest plumber of all time. That’s not a knock on plumbers, either. I respect their work tremendously.
We were greeted by chipped paint, cracked trim and an old, carpeted staircase upon entering. The living space was nice and open as advertised, but the floors were worn down and the kitchen cabinets desperately needed replacing. There also wasn’t much of a yard to speak of, which was a mandatory. Overall, the house was dated, something we couldn’t obviously tell from the wide lens photos they posted for the listing.
We knew immediately the house wasn’t right for us, but this was our first time looking with our agent and we didn’t want to seem too rash or reactionary. We did our due diligence and walked through it in its entirety, room to room. As we did, I kept an eye on our agent, watching what she did and what she checked for and tried to mimic her moves to appear as if I had a single clue what I was doing. I felt the walls, looked in crannies, observed the ceilings, identified cracks and chips to comment on, opened and closed every single cabinet hoping something smart to say would be inside one of them. Usually there wasn’t.
After unturning every stone, we rendezvoused back at the front door and broke the news to our agent that it just wasn’t the right house for us, we would not be putting in an offer, and we were sorry for wasting her time.
“I would judge you two a lot if you put an offer on this house.”
Relief swept over us. She proceeded to rattle off a million things wrong with the place, some things we hadn’t even noticed, and she made very good points which made us feel even better on our decision to pass. She also explained that her fee would come from the sellers, not us, so we didn’t owe her anything for her time and that she was more than happy to help us on our house buying adventure, something we didn’t know. In fact, there was a lot we didn’t know about the process that we would learn in the coming days. Interest rates? We aren’t buying a bank. Appraisal? Never heard of her.
We said our good bye’s and thank you’s and our no really thank you’s and headed out to the car. On our drive out of the neighborhood we commented on how terrible the area was and how terrible the neighbor’s houses looked and how terrible the location as a whole would be to live in, feeling untethered from a self-imposed expectation to adore the place. No difficult decisions would have to be made that day.
So began our house hunt. We went back to our cracker box apartment and did some paperwork and met with a lender and got approved for a loan and did all the things someone does when they’re serious about purchasing a home. You know, important things. Important things they never teach you at school because school is a scam.
All summer long we kept an eye on the market in case something absolutely darling popped up that we wanted to go see, and from time to time our agent would send us a listing to a house she thought we might like. And every now and then we would go, if nothing else to get some more experience under our belts, and every time we went there was something wrong with the place. In some instances there was something terribly wrong. Like the house that sat directly on one of the busiest intersections in town. Or the one with a warped stone foundation that leaked water. Or the one with ceilings too low for me to walk through.
The house of our dreams had yet to cross our paths but that was okay, because we still had nothing but time. We were gaining experience and learning what our priorities were. For me, the yard was most important. For her, the kitchen. We both agreed an open concept was best and that the living space overall was the most important thing since that’s where we would spend the majority of our time. Location was obviously crucial, so we narrowed our search to a handful of neighborhoods, with the caveat that certain streets were off the table because of how busy they are. CALL US PICKY, WHY DONTCHYA.
Of course, the more we looked the more we realized was actually attainable in the budget we initially set for ourselves. Originally, we were comfortable with the idea of aiming low and getting a cute little fixer upper type house, with the mindset that we would only be there for a couple of years and could do a few projects to it in the meantime. We’ve watched HGTV. We get it.
But as the pandemic went longer and longer our apartment became smaller and smaller. Suddenly a 1200 square foot house felt like upgrading from a jail cell into a slightly bigger jail cell. And the more we looked, the more we realized we just couldn’t check as many boxes as we wanted to in the range we were looking. So we bumped our budget up a smidge (we were saving super diligently, after all).
Now, in this paragraph I’m going to talk about something that happens when you begin looking for a house. Something terrible and dreadful and miserable. And that’s that your friends also begin looking for houses, too. Not only do they start looking for houses, but start finding and buying houses. And because we’re horrible creatures with acidy spite in our DNA, we grow resentful and jealous of them. But you aren’t allowed to show it. You go over to their new house with a housewarming gift (an out-of-season candle or bottle of raspberry wine you’ll never drink) and you smile and nod and say how great it is as they give you the tour while keeping a watchful eye for anything and everything wrong with the place to justify why you actually aren’t jealous of their new house at all. After keeping a mental tally all night long, you get back to the car and look at each other and start rattling off everything wrong with the house and reasons you would never purchase it yourself before finally eventually coming to the conclusion that, shit, it actually is a great house and good for them and good for everybody and I guess we don’t hope it burns down on them one day.
(Our friend from the beginning of this? The one with the backyard? Where we began our job hunt? He sold that house and bought a new one in the span of a couple weeks. Fuck you Roith. We hate you).
So anyway, we looked at houses with our realtor all summer long and began to grow a really great rapport with her. She was dialed in on what we were looking for and was beginning to show us some houses that we would have strongly considered if it had been closer to our lease date. She told us all about her kids who are our age and what they’re houses are like and what they looked for in a home and it all seemed to match up perfectly with our tastes. She told us about a style of home — Drummonds — that are mid-century moderns scattered throughout the city that she absolutely adored and thought we would absolutely adore, too. She even went out of her way to show us one just for fun and would send us listings anytime they popped up, even if they were way out of our price range, just to gush with us over how beautiful they were. She was, in a word, incredible. Everything about her demeanor radiated experience and confidence. We would walk in a house and she’d say “you aren’t buying this place” before we could make it past the entryway. We loved her.
Everything was going according to plan and we were getting ready to ramp up our search, but then one night we got another text. A different text. This one from my buddy who was family friends with our realtor. The one who introduced us.
He told us that our realtor had passed away unexpectedly.
We were stunned. We had just seen her the weekend before. She had just texted us the DAY before. We were devastated for her family. And horribly, irrelevantly, selfishly, we couldn’t help but wonder about how this affected our situation. We had developed such a great relationship with her. She was absolutely dialed into what we wanted. What would we do? Who would we use?
We were back to square one.
