On my 34th birthday, I entered a new phase of my life: house hunting. In my first 33 years of life, I only knew apartment hunting, which is a lot like buying a car: you show up to the lot, you pick the one you like, you drive away at the end of the day. House hunting is apartment hunting on steriods, or the next level up in the video game called life. There's a lot to know about it before starting, and I wasn't ready. I still don't think I'm ready, but MJ and I are starting to take the leap.
The house hunting process, like college application process, apparently starts years before actually buying a house: building up credit. Luckily I paid off all my student loans from law school (I just celebrated my 10-year anniversary of graduating law school!) and pay all my credit card bills on time, so the lending company I talked to was pretty happy to talk to me and offer me all kinds of their products so I could pay them 2.5%+ interest over 15 years. (Show them what they've won!)
There's also the matter of picking a real estate agent. The lendor and the realtor: like right-hand man/woman and left-hand man/woman in the house buying process, kind of have to hire these extra hands/ helpers. And really, anybody can just sign up to be a lendor/realtor, as long as you pass the license. It's very much the middle-man model that America thrives off of, everyone gets a cut. I'm a lawyer so I can't complain: I make my money as a middle man to pay other middle men to get what I want. And on the seller's side, they have to pick a middle man/woman of their choice to get sell us waht they want. Keeping track of how many middle men in this transaction? It's a country of middle men/women. Oh and of course there are taxes upon buying the property, so one of those middle men will be Uncle Sam. Oh and then if you're not buying a home in the middle of nowhere or a farmhouse somewhere, welcome to the Home Association! And Homeowner Association fees, or "HOAs." More like DOAs, "Death on Arrival." Some of these monthly fees to the home association are as high as some people's rent. (The first apartment I lived in college was $400 a month! $400!)
"Wise men say......only fools rush in...." is a great song by Elvis that MJ and I used as her song for walking down the aisle at our wedding, and I played on my violin as she did so. So I should be familiar with it, but boy did I rush in. We went to the first open house we saw on Zillow, liked what we saw, met a realtor there, got her story, and signed up already........And almost submitted an offer within a week! Worked for us for apartments, especially since we got some "move-in special deals" if we applied within 24 hours of touring the apartment, certianly a marketing trick, but there's no move-in deals in buying a home! Only the idea of "moving quickly" to beat the competition since it's a seller's market, and homes are selling like hotcakes. Our realtor kind of lit a fire under a butt by calling one home that was on the market but finding out it was already under contract by the time we called, showing how fast things can move. The equivalent of a "BUY BUY BUY" panic button similar to the one Jim Cramer uses on Mad Money. It is hard to resist the impulse to BUY because the house is just sitting there and I have been pre-approved with a loan and I know what I can afford, but for someone like me who's easily swayed by what other people say because I hadn't considered it before, I have to "sleep on it" and then wake up the next day feeling differently about what I want than the day before, especially if I got a new opinion from a friend who bought a house before. "Watch out for HoA's!" "Condos? Why would you want to buy a condo?" "Don't buy! Wait for a better opportunity!" "Don't rent anymore, you're not getting any equity!" All different pieces of advice floating in my ear based on other people's own experiences that might not necessarily apply to me specifically, but they definitely influence me. I feel like a fatuous king of China's history who has 20 retainers telling him 20 different things and getting more indecisive after hearing each one, and ultimately going with the advice of whomever he talked to last. (The Donald Trump maneuver, except I'm not a billionaire real estate mogul trying to buy his first 2-bd. 2-bath 1000 sq ft. home).
This house hunting thing is both frustrating and thrilling at the same time! I love and hate it!
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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