Lessons I've Learned as a First-Time Homeowner
I started this blog post in August of 2020, a few months after closing on and moving into our first home. I returned to it in June 2021, shortly after our one year anniversary in the house and realized how much it sounded like a madwoman’s trauma diary, so I’m glad that I stepped away before publishing! Now, 12 months and several big life changes into this new-to-us house, I’m ready to share some of the many lessons I’ve learned as a first-time homeowner.
Starting the search
Don’t settle for a realtor who’ll make you feel like less than their first priority. We were lucky enough to connect with our realtor, Karyn, who took the time to answer every concern we had about the purchase process — even when I showed up to our first meeting with a notebook bearing four pages of questions, wants, and needs. As first-time home buyers working with the added complexity of a VA (Veteran’s Association) loan, having somebody trustworthy, patient, and empathetic to shepherd us through the process was absolutely essential.
Make a list and check it… more than twice, probably. I highly recommend writing down a list of absolute non-negotiable deal breakers for any home, writing out your must-haves, as well as providing a list of “nice to haves” for good measure. This will help give your agent a good jumping-off point as you begin the search journey! You might find that some of those must-haves are really nice-to-haves, and your nice-to-haves become less important in the scheme of things. Here are some examples of how that shook out for us:
Non-negotiable: Neighborhood must not have an HOA
Must have: House must have at least three bedrooms and two bathrooms
Nice to have: It would be great to have an en-suite bathroom attached to the main bedroom
Zillow ain’t it. While @zillowgonewild is one of my favorite Instagram accounts, it’s not my favorite home browsing platform. Often, the listings are out of date or details are inaccurate! We found that using Realtor.com (and its app) was much more reliable for up-to-date information, showcasing the newest listings, saving detailed searches, and more. Because it’s what most realtors themselves use, you’ll see homes toggle to “pending” in real time; that way you never get your heart set on something out of reach.
Ignore your pre-approval amount and focus on what you could actually comfortably spend on a monthly basis. We were pre-approved by several lenders for nearly $200K more than we ended up spending on our home, and I can truthfully say that we’d be downright miserable if we’d purchased anything pricier than the house we ended up in. Sitting down and honestly assessing our actual monthly spending habits helped us determine what we could afford to pay each month for a home and still be able to live our life. We determined a maximum mortgage payment that we could swing even with potentially tacking on a car payment (which we’ve since done), going out to eat every once in a while, saving for travel, and accounting for home improvement costs, then set our sights there. It served us extremely well in the long run, as we feel stretched tight a lot less often than we would’ve if we’d sprung for a house at the top of our pre-approval range.
A watercolor we had done of our house when we first moved in. I can’t believe how much about it has already changed during our first year as homeowners!
Don’t get caught up in the game. It’s so easy to fall in love with the idea of a home and start to lose sight of the things you’d previously committed to! When you find a spot with the perfect porch, suddenly a homeowners’ association might seem like something you could probably tolerate. Or perhaps that perfect cul-de-sac cottage has you considering offering to waive inspections and pay $20K more than your max budget. Don’t fall for it! Determine your true non-negotiables at the start of your search and stick to them. It’s worth waiting for a place that checks all your boxes, even if it’s tempting to lose sight of those pesky details when faced with a perfectly staged “dream” home.
To put it lightly, the first-time home search can be disheartening. Particularly in the Bay Area, we discovered that it’s not uncommon to be one of 30+ bidders in a single weekend, or be laughed out of the running for a home when other buyers can offer $200K above the asking price in cash. Thinking back, we made offers (and wrote personal letters to the seller) on half a dozen homes over the course of more than half a year before we found the one we ended up buying! We were never even frontrunners until finding the place we purchased, where we just so happened to have our offer accepted quickly due to the uncertainty of the market during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Masked, exhausted, and happy on our first official day as homeowners!
Making the purchase
Buying your first home is hard. Buying your first home in the San Francisco Bay Area during an unprecedented global pandemic while your community is in the midst of a social uprising with daily public protests and a lot of emotional turmoil to grapple with is next-level hard. Make sure you have your therapist, mom, or both on speed-dial.
Everything is more expensive than you think it’ll be. Set your budget for closing costs and last-minute expenses to account for 25% more than you predict you’ll need, because stuff always comes up. Everyone says this because it’s true! Ultimately, we spent thousands of unexpected dollars converting an un-permitted bedroom back into a functioning garage, making small repairs, and doing pest treatments before the VA would allow us to finally close and get our keys. We also had to pay $3K for another month’s rent because all of the aforementioned hurdles pushed back our timelines so much.
Yes, you’ll cry. Don’t pack up your tissues too soon into the closure and moving process, because the stress is a lot! I definitely had a few minor breakdowns when it felt like the purchase was going to fall through. Again, this is where an empathetic and patient realtor comes in clutch.
In some ways, it feels like it takes forever to close on your first house. In other ways, it absolutely flies by! It was crazy to me that one day, we were simply looking at homes and the next day, we were in contract with an accepted offer. It’s so important to use the contingency period of your contract to deeply evaluate your future home, inspect everything, and be sure this is what you really want.
Performing home inspections at the height of a global pandemic means wearing PPE, signing waivers, and learning to do a lot of things yourself!
Homeownership discoveries
In a pandemic, there’s no easy way to introduce yourself to your new neighbors. Homemade cookies just don’t have the same appeal when everyone is scared of everybody else’s germs, and exchanging a friendly “howdy” is tough when you’re standing at opposite ends of the street and muffled by masks! My suburban sitcom expectations were met with the realities of navigating a global health crisis, and that’s OK. It’ll all happen in due course.
In most cases, you’ve got a “grace period” on your mortgage precisely so that you don’t overthink it and pay twice when your auto-payment doesn’t go through on the 1st of the month! That’s an expensive panic mistake I’ll never make again.
Measure twice, level thrice… and cry once when you still somehow get it wrong and hang a crooked mirror.
You thought white stovetops were hard to keep clean? Joke’s on you! Prepare to spend hours of your life wiping down a black stovetop or stainless steel fridge each week. You’ll learn a lot about the functionality of your new appliances after you settle in, and previously assumed luxuries may start to feel like dreaded chore-magnets. It’s all a part of learning what you like!
Take advantage of your home warranty during the first year. We ended up using ours (through American Home Shield) to re-key all of our locks and replace a burst water heater. The gist of a home warranty is that, for covered appliances and parts of your home, you’ll only pay a set deductible price to repair or replace in the event of damage. That means we paid $75 for each project, versus paying the entirety out of pocket.
Get used to muttering, “F*ck the previous homeowner.” The number of times I’ve cursed the former tenants, contractors, and homeowners of our 70-year-old house has surpassed my ability to count! The often mind-boggling choices made along the way before you called the place home — like, perhaps cutting holes in perfectly good vintage wood plank flooring, running 12 separate internet lines into a single home, or not insulating the added-on master bedroom — will present serious curveballs as you begin to renovate your house. Again, be prepared to spend 25% more (money, time, resentful energy, or all three) than you anticipate for any given project.
YouTube can teach you a lot, but there’s also no shame in hiring out a job! Christopher and I are pretty handy and like to learn, but our first year as homeowners has taught us that we don’t have to do everything ourselves. We like to paint, replace light fixtures, landscape, do small plumbing jobs, and make aesthetic changes on our own, but major projects like pouring cement or installing air conditioning are best left to the pros.
You’ll never stop learning. Home ownership is a constant adventure, and won’t cease to provide new discoveries! Each day in this house presents a new possibility for improvement, a different lesson to learn, and a small victory to accomplish. Enjoy the journey and embrace not being an expert! Everyone starts somewhere.
I know I’ll have a new perspective in another year, five years, and a decade down the line, and I can’t wait to keep learning new lessons about homeownership. Building a happy nest for my growing family has been one of the biggest challenges and most rewarding experiences of my life!
Is there anything else you’d like to know that I didn’t cover here? (Trust me, there are so many facets of the first-time homeownership experience that I have barely scratched the surface.) Let me know in the comments!
