Seldom can I scroll through Instagram without being ambushed by the personal finance gurus who promise financial freedom through homeownership. All I need to do to join this class of homeowners is follow their expert tips, go back in time to when interest rates were lower, buy their online course offerings, and then the gates will open for me too. On the other side of social media, if I take a peek at my Facebook feed to see what peers from my high school are currently up to, it’s filled with engagement announcements, baby pictures, and now, house photos with captions that proudly proclaim, “We got the keys!”
Even the friends I made in my early 20s in New York City, who like me, squashed into tiny apartments with flex walls and multiple roommates, are moving on. Despite our promises that we were going to be young forever, live in a city forever, and rent forever—with the former being a direct result of the latter—I can feel the tides shifting. More important than the question of if people are buying homes is a more pressing one: How the heck are they doing it? Like many milestones in life, figuring out how to buy a house can feel like a secret club where only some people got the secret instruction manual. To add further complexity to an already difficult feat, right now is a particularly challenging time to try to buy a home.
As millennials enter their peak home-buying years, the housing market landscape is much different than what their parents faced. Home prices across the US have dramatically outpaced salary growth, and interest rates are the highest they’ve been in 22 years. With interest rates for a 30-year mortgage topping 8%, homeowners who locked in low rates are refusing to sell, resulting in a tepid supply of homes for sale and prices that are unaffordable for the majority of first-time home buyers.
Despite how impossible it feels for many of us to achieve, I think it’s important for everyone to know that it’s actually not. Even with less-than-ideal market conditions, millennials are making it happen by getting creative, finding great deals, and sharing information to make the process more accessible. I spoke with nine freshly minted millennial homeowners across the US about what they wish they had known before buying a house.
Name: Tiffany Thompson
Location: Portland, Oregon
What is your relationship with home-owning?
I’ve always dreamt about home ownership as a way to create generational wealth in my family. Buying a home isn’t just about having roots somewhere but also about investing in your future. My grandparents were the first to own a home in my family and I saw how that decision could have an impact on generations to come.
When did your home-buying process begin?
I purchased my first home at 29 years old, outside of Portland, Oregon. My goal was to purchase a home before I became a true “Adult” when I turned 30. My second home is with my spouse and it’s our first home together, which is special.
When did you close on the house?
I closed on my most recent home in early 2021, while we were still in the midst of the pandemic. It took 45 days from us first finding the home, putting in an offer, the homeowners rejecting our offer and taking us as the backup offer, to then accepting the offer and closing on the home. It was an interesting process to say the least and very different from my first home. The first home, I went back and forth with the seller until we both felt comfortable with a final offer.
Tell me about your house, why do you love it?
We currently live in a daylight ranch. It’s a midcentury-modern home built in 1965. The former homeowner, Allen, built it for his family to grow up in and we are the only other person to own it since he passed. We fell in love with the bold color on the outside, it’s avocado green. I love the story behind the home and what he built with his hands. The location and property is great and large. It’s enough of a home for us to grow into.
How did you choose this house?
I chose this home specifically for the potential it offered. My first home was a turn-key flip. I’m an interior designer and I knew that I wanted to remodel my next home and put my touch on it. I wanted to make it become a test home for new ideas and concepts, and really honor the legacy of what once was. I knew this was our house as soon as I went inside, even if the seller didn’t.
What do you wish you knew before starting the home-buying process?
I think what most people should know is that it’s not as scary as you think it is. You should also start looking into the process way before you may be ready to purchase. A lot of times when you are ready, you can be sadly surprised by your income, entrepreneurship woes, and other things that can feel deflating. Starting the process early and knowing what you need to do financially, what you can truly afford, and what is out there is key.
How long did you save before buying a home?
We saved for two and a half years.
What motivated you to buy a home when you did?
We have an expanding family and needed more space. More importantly, we talked openly about finances and our relationship, and this was the next step.
What was one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
Not asking for more upfront. Sellers bank on you having an emotional connection to the house and going through a process that when something unexpected comes up, you almost shy away from really negotiating because you don’t want to lose something you’ve already set your hopes on. That’s the wrong mentality. If you don’t fight for what is needed and fair, it will end up costing you in the long run. Think about this as a two way transaction—you have something to lose in your time and so does the seller. Be stern on what you need to close the deal. They can always say no.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about the process of buying a house?
That you have to buy where you want to live for decades to come. I think the idea of staying in one place for a long time, like our parents did, scares a lot of people. We should rethink this and look at home ownership as an opportunity to own something and have it in our financial folder. It can always turn into an investment property.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
Start with something you can manage. Nothing that is too big of a project or a financial burden. You want to ease your way into this so you can enjoy the process. Also, start looking outside of where you work. If you’re in NYC, look upstate. Look for things that can be a getaway property to get your feet wet. Also, you never want to be the most expensive house on the block. You want to gain equity.
What has been the biggest challenge as a homeowner?
Make sure you have savings for when things go wrong or it’s out of your control. That can feel so deflating and why people say “owning a home is expensive.” Don’t use all of your money buying the house. Have two separate pots for emergency funds/maintenance and furniture. No one wants an empty home so make sure you account for that when you think about how much you can afford.
Name: Delaney Lundquist
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina
How did you find your house?
I was on Zillow every minute of the day. I had the alerts set up so everything that was posted was sent to me. Even the multimillion-dollar-plus homes. Although we obviously were not buying those, I looked at every house. That’s because I did enjoy that. I enjoy looking at houses. Some people might want an agent who’s actually going to send stuff to them. But I don’t think there was a single instance in which our agent sent me a house that I hadn’t seen.
How did you choose this house?
This is such a sexy story. We walked into the open house and I was like, “No, I don’t think so.” The open house was weird because they had a live musician playing music in the living room. It wasn’t aggressive music or anything, just soft acoustic covers, but I felt so uncomfortable so I didn’t really explore the house, because I thought I needed to give him distance. We left the house and I knew we were leaving for Japan in a month and also planning our wedding. Planning a wedding is like throwing your money into the abyss, so I was like, “I’m not in the mood to buy a house, I could take it or leave it with this one.” But then my fiancé was like, “Oh, I actually really liked it.” But I just couldn’t wrap my mind around getting my stuff together to buy a house right now.
After the weekend passed, I got a text from the agent that was like, “Let me know if you have more questions about the house.” Then I realized they didn’t have any offers on it and that’s when I got more interested. We had lost out on probably four or five houses prior, to varying degrees. It made me feel good that Alex really liked it. There were only a few houses that we really agreed on even though we had seen probably fifty or so. The thing that made it become the one was that we weren’t going to have to compete against offers. I did not walk in like, “I love this house.” It feels new even though it’s very old, I don’t like that. I don’t like an open floor plan, it has one. But I’m gonna make it work.
How long did you save before buying a home?
Alex and I have been together for seven years and pretty early on in our relationship we agreed that we didn’t want to live in New York forever. We weren’t sure where we were going to agree to live but we did want to move to a smaller city to be able to buy a home, it was always like five to 10 years on the horizon. My dad died a couple of years ago and I got an inheritance from him. My sister and I joke because we’re kind of glib, where it’s like, “That’s our dead dad money.” My dead dad money helped me buy this house. I don’t know how people do it without weird windfalls like that, because without it, we wouldn't have been able to afford this particular house. So it’s a combination of those weird things—I don’t want to call it a privilege because it’s never a privilege to have weird things happen in life. I don’t want to diminish our effort though, because we were always saving, but we wouldn’t have achieved this level without the inheritance I got from him.
Where did you seek advice or find resources to help educate yourself?
When my dad died, I had to get a financial planner because of the intricacies of tax law and inheritances, so I talked to her. I can’t recommend that enough, you actually don’t have to have such an extreme sum of money in order to work with a financial planner in general. Even if I only had, say, $100,000 in my retirement account, I would still be actively seeking out advice from a person like that in general, because it has been incredibly helpful in so many aspects. I was also googling so much. One resource that I like for financial stuff is the Financial Diet, I read basically all their articles about home buying. We also talked to our parents, so we were getting those bits of information and then trying to filter and create clarity for ourselves. You need to get advice from so many different sources. You wouldn’t write a research paper with only one source, you wouldn’t buy a house with only one source.
How did you finance your house?
We shopped around for rates, which everyone should do. We were recommended to a mortgage company by our realtor and had been using her throughout the process to get us pre-approval letters. But when it came down to actually getting our mortgage, we shopped around for rates. Ultimately, someone else gave us a better rate. We also went to a credit union to get a rate and their rate was dramatically lower than some of the banks and I don’t know if that’s like an across the board rule, but in the future, I would make sure to check in with a credit union. It was pretty advantageous for us, because even though we ended up working with a traditional bank, we brought their rate back and it helped us negotiate.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about the process of buying a house?
Buying a house is not the end all be all. I don’t think there’s any shame in renting, there are a lot of benefits to renting. I’m certainly not excited about taking care of all of the issues that are going on in the house. Go at your own pace.
What do you wish you knew before starting the home-buying process?
Something I wish I knew about the process is that people are always like, “Be prepared for closing costs and things are going to come up in the inspection so be prepared to also spend thousands of dollars on top of the purchase price.” They can say that all they want, but it did not compute for me. I was like, “Where are these thousands of dollar closing costs coming from?” Then you see the final term sheet: attorney fees, appraisals, surveyors, paralegal fees, and that adds up to thousands of dollars. The other point, that something always comes up in the inspection, is also true which I found hard to believe.
In our case, the house looked amazing from the walk-through and the [previous owners] lived here for 10 years, which to me is a very good sign like they love the house and there was nothing wrong with it. The inspector went through it and uncovered that they hadn’t been cleaning their air ducts for the entirety that they lived here, they didn’t even have air filters on. The inspector told us that we needed to redo our entire duct system, and that’s like $10,000. People always say things come up with the inspection and it’s so hard to know what that actually means because you don’t know what the possible issues could be. Don’t be afraid of that; it’s just par for the course. With homeownership, something does always come up, houses require maintenance.
What was one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
The house appraised $25,000 or $35,000 less than what we had agreed and then the sellers wouldn’t negotiate, they were steadfast. If we would come up $20,000 and then they would come down like $5,000. There is a law in North Carolina with this thing called earnest money and due diligence money. Basically, whatever you put up in due diligence, the seller keeps it if you walk away from the sale. We put down $20,000 in due diligence and we really didn’t want to lose that money, because there’s no instance in which the seller wouldn’t get that. In the end, they came down like $10,000. We just had to move on. It’s fine, it’s done.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring Millennial and Gen Z homeowners?
Divorce yourself from the idea of the perfect home, the forever home. I didn’t walk in like, “This is the one,” but there are so many other factors that contribute to buying a house. Whether you can afford it, if it’s in an area that you like, or that’s actually at the top of its market and doesn’t have any room to grow. It mattered to us how close we were to the airport, how close we were to Alex’s family, and we wanted to have a yard with a shed. There are many other things besides just walking in and being overcome with emotion.
Despite me being like, “I don’t love this style of it feeling new and the open floor,” there were 10 other boxes we needed to check. It is the right size. It is the right kind of space. There aren’t any major construction issues we need to undertake. We wanted it to be move-in ready. I wish I had divorced myself from the idea of finding my perfect 1920s bungalow. I’m not actually up for renovating, so I needed to get rid of that idea. Try to be as practical as you can. Managing contractors, sourcing quotes, making phone calls, staying on top of people—I was lying to myself that I might want to do renovations.
Name: Abby Campbell
Location: Miami, Florida
Was buying a home always something you wanted to do?
I’ve always wanted to have my own home. It was one of those things that I dreamed about since I was a child. Some little girls were planning their weddings and playing with baby dolls, but I was building my own little homes in my closet or building a fort. I was absolutely obsessed with the day that I could have my own home by myself. I wasn’t thinking like, “Oh, me and my husband.” I was like, “No, my home.” The older I got, the more I realized that it’s probably not attainable. But I got really, really lucky. The interest rates were really low when I bought this house and I found a very good deal in a very good neighborhood, which was unheard of. I’ve always wanted to have a home. That was my ultimate dream. I hope it’s helpful for people to hear that a single person can do this. Because I didn’t think that it was possible. It's really hard. But if I was still living in New York, I’d be paying even more.
When did you start planning to buy a house?
I definitely had a nest egg saved up for a big life event. Whether that was a wedding or a house or whatever. I got to the point where I was like, “Okay, I can’t really afford to be in New York anymore.” I was going to have to start dwindling this nest egg to be able to live in an apartment in New York, or I could use the money to invest in my future and my dream to have a house, so it seemed like a good time to buy. At the time, the house prices were a lot higher, but the interest rates were a lot lower. The monthly payment for me is what matters. I was trying to figure out where I was going to buy a house and I’ve always loved Miami. There was a really cool creative scene happening down here with like-minded people, so I knew that if I came here, I would have a community. It has been a great place to live. Florida is embarrassing, but Miami is a little different.
How did you find your house?
I was hunting from Brooklyn in 2021. In the spring of that year, I decided to look in Miami because I could really see myself living there. I really wanted a cute vintage home with original character because I love the architecture here. Over that summer, I visited twice to search for neighborhoods and figure out where I could afford to live and what I liked. I had realtors here helping me since I was in New York. I found the house on Zillow from a notification. I sent it to my realtors and I was like “This!” And they were like, “Oh my God, we have to get in there before the open house.” They scheduled an appointment and I’m sitting there on FaceTime with a horrible connection in a Salvation Army in Long Island and told them, “I can’t really see anything, but I trust you.” Then we made an offer and they accepted.
One week later, I was in Miami looking at the house the day that the open house was supposed to be. The stars aligned in every possible way. That’s what I tell people who are thinking it’s going to be impossible to find a home. You just have to manifest it. My search was impossible. My realtor laughed at me when I told them my budget and the neighborhood I wanted to be in. They were like, “Sweetie, I don’t think you really know what’s going on, because that’s not going to happen.” They suggested I look in Fort Lauderdale or Hollywood.
How did you find your realtor?
I met somebody in New York who was a customer—I think she bought one thing from me and we connected on Instagram. She lived down here and had a really cute house. She was the person that I was like, “Oh, she has a really cute life here. Maybe I could have a cute life here too.” She was my go-to person, I was like, “What neighborhood do you live in? What neighborhoods are cool for young people?” I asked who she used for a realtor and she ended up connecting me to the realtors who represented the house she bought. They’re a pair of sisters from New York and they love vintage charming houses with character, that’s their thing.
Where did you seek advice or find resources to help educate yourself?
My realtors kind of did everything for me. I also worked with an insurance broker and insurance here is absolutely insane. I’m paying way more for insurance than people in other parts of the country would—a lot of people here also have to have flood insurance which is an additional very large expense. If you’re buying in a place like Miami or New York or LA, if it’s a metropolitan city, it’s going to be very different from people who have bought places in more remote areas. Whoever you’re asking, whether it’s your realtor or your insurance agent, talk to them about what the future could look like. Try to get a full understanding of if your property taxes skyrocket in a couple of years and if there is an exemption program to help you. Ask if there is anything that you can qualify for that’s going to help you in any way, any government programs or things like that.
What is one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
I wish that I had fully understood property taxes more and how much they can change over time. When you’re buying a house, everybody on your team, like your mortgage company, insurance company, your lawyer, and everybody you’re working with, finalizes everything and tells you, “Okay, this is how much your monthly payments are gonna be. These are your property taxes, your insurance, and your mortgage.” You see that number and you’re like, “Oh, this is great. I feel so secure.” I was like, “This is so much less money than what I’ve been spending.” You see that number and think that this is going to be for the next 30 years, give or take a little bit. Turns out that number doesn’t stay like that for very long. I’m sure this is different depending on what city you're in and where your house is located, but what I didn’t understand was that what the number used to calculate my property taxes was the number my previous homeowners had been paying and they had this house for 20 years.
Once the house sells, it gets reevaluated based on the sale. So there’s also something here called Homestead, which caps the percentage your property taxes can increase each year. I think in Florida it’s for first-time homebuyers and they have to be living in the house. You have to get that immediately when you move in. So I did. I was told that I needed Homestead, but didn’t fully know what it was. So I signed up for it, or tried to, and was denied. Because I didn’t fully understand what it was, when I was denied I was like, “Well, I tried so I guess, I’ll just move on.” I shouldn’t have gotten denied, but I didn’t know that either. The repercussions started to hit right away because I didn’t have Homestead secured in my first year in the house. The following year, your home gets reassessed and then you get your estimate for the new property tax bill and it doubled essentially. I had to start paying back the difference from the previous year and then paying for the next year at the same time. I went from paying this number that I felt really good about paying every month to this insane number that was like 1.3 times what I had been paying.
I should have been more aggressive in figuring out what they needed to secure Homestead in that first year. I think that all they needed was a Florida driver’s license or just a bill that said that I lived here. So it was a very costly mistake for me. Now I know the importance of securing Homestead within that time frame. The lesson learned here is if you get a piece of mail related to your house, open it and if you don’t understand it, you should do everything in your power to understand what it means because it could be something that turns into this. Before you even decide to live in a certain area, figure out what your property taxes could be.
What do you wish you knew before starting the home-buying process?
Definitely know what it’s going to cost to do any sort of baseline renovations just to get you in there. Even during your inspection, they don’t catch everything. They can help you figure out how much you're going to have to put into the house when you get in there, or how much you’re going to ask as a credit from the sellers. In my case, there wasn’t really a ton but then when I got in, one of my contractors came in to start doing some work and we found an entire closet full of mold. The inspector didn’t find it because there was stuff in front of the wall when they did the inspection. I knew I was going to have to refinish my floors and repaint, fix some trim, interior doors, just cosmetic stuff. Have an idea of surprise costs and have some money put away for that because you don’t want to move into a house with a moldy closet.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
If your home has original character, keep it. Especially if you’re in a historic home or if it was built in a way that they don’t do things anymore. They’re not putting plaster molding in homes anymore and they’re not putting in beautiful, intricate fireplaces. It might not be your exact taste, but then find a different home if you don’t want to embrace the charm. It’s so important to preserve those things because they don’t happen anymore. That’s a big part of why I wanted to look at Miami, because I wanted to embrace the style of homes here. If I had bought somewhere else, the interiors would reflect whatever the house is. Definitely base your interiors off of what the home is saying.
What has been the biggest challenge as a homeowner?
You’re basically now your own superintendent. Everyone tells you this when you buy a home, to get ready for when your AC unit breaks and then all of a sudden you have to spend $5,000 or whatever. If you’re renting, you just call your landlord and then they handle it. But now, you’re the landlord. If something breaks, it’s only gonna get fixed if you can pay for it and figure out how to fix it. I knew this to a certain extent, but with an older home, things like that happen a little more often. I’ve had to call my AC people twice and I’ve been here for two years.
Name: Samantha Klein
Location: Los Angeles, California
Did you always want to buy a house?
I grew up in Los Angeles in a house. My parents bought a one-story house in a part of town that was up-and-coming. My grandparents escaped Poland during the Holocaust and my grandpa started his own lumberyard, literally selling lumber in his front yard. He and my dad built the second story themselves and my parents still live there now 40 years later. My husband’s company was acquired and he was one of the first 40 employees, so he ended up getting a buyout of his stock. We weren’t married yet, not even engaged, just boyfriend and girlfriend. It happened so fast and we were like, What do we do?” My husband happened to have a friend that was a realtor who was like, “You guys should buy a house” We were like, “Oh, really?” It seemed so far off in the future and the amounts, especially in LA, seemed so high. You’re expected to put 20% down which is a lot of money. I don’t want to be super specific about how much money he got, but it was not a lot. I think he bought a used car and we put a down payment on a house and he had to go right back to work somewhere else.
Where did you seek advice or find resources to help educate yourself?
My husband’s friend who was a realtor really guided us. It was super challenging, it definitely consumed us both. It took us four or five months to find a house and I know that didn’t sound long, but we were going to open houses constantly. We were putting in offers and getting rejected constantly, getting our hopes and dreams slashed constantly and that was really, really, really hard and challenging. We were actually escrow on a different place before this that was a duplex in a part of town that we really wanted to live in. During the inspection period, we realized we were going to have to evict the person living in the place and it was a family of four and I’m like “We’re not doing this.” We lost like $2,000 in the inspection fees and stuff like that, but I was like, “This is just not something we're not capable of. Mentally it’s just not something I want to do.”
What do you wish you knew before starting the home-buying process?
There are so many moments where you want to throw in the towel and just be like, “Well, that was the best house, that house was perfect for me, that was my place and now I can’t have it, so I’m miserable.” But once you do find the place and it all works out, you don’t sit and think about all the other places that you missed in the past. I think it definitely is one of those situations where what is meant to be will be. I was so in love with a couple of houses and were so sure that we were going to get it, and it just didn’t work out.
One thing that my dad told me is, “Whatever your max is, try to go a little bit more to get into another neighborhood.” I think this was his own personal regret, because he wished that had bought in Santa Monica instead of in Mar Vista, which is right next to it, but the houses in Santa Monica are worth so much more because of the zip code. His advice was that if you can somehow scrounge it up, make that happen because the value of homes in LA is always going up. I do think that you should do whatever it takes for sure.
But also, you can grieve that house and that life that you imagined yourself having and then move on. I’ve definitely met a few people recently or talked to a few people that are like, “I’m taking it slow, because I want to live in this specific neighborhood and I’m just gonna look at houses there. I’m not in a rush.” Obviously, that’s ideal. If you can do that, you should. Not everyone is able to be that ‘lax about it but I think starting sooner rather than later, and going to open houses and setting alerts is really the best way to do it. You do have to have a thick skin but l think that is just what it is.
How did you find your house?
We had our alerts set and saw the picture of our house on the website and I saw a giant teardrop shaped window in the living room and exposed beams and I was like, “This house is gorgeous.” The fact that it wasn’t staged at all—it had brown carpet and the ugliest chandelier and the weirdest, cheapest mirrors and sconces—all those things are so easy to see past. You could just throw those out and get new flooring. Luckily, the carpet had hardwood floor underneath so we really lucked out. We lucked out in so many ways. One of the major ways that we lucked out though is that the people had been renting it for almost 30 years from the same two people. So it was in great condition. There was a mark on the carpet where the TV had been but we knew we were getting rid of that so that was fine. There was a lot of ugly carpet in the house.
The people selling the house were out of state and didn’t want to have an open house. They wanted to sell it essentially as quickly as possible and it was already such a competitive time that multiple people were sending in offers from the photos and we were one of them. We did get to see it in person and we were like, “We want it, we want it, we want it!” I think there was a slight back-and-forth-like counter-offer situation, we were pretty aggressive about it and so confident that we were gonna get it and we did.
What surprised you the most about the process of buying a house?
They say that moving, divorce, and death are the hardest things that you could go through. I think the part about moving they don’t really talk about is that emotionally it’s such a hard time. It’s not a fun process until it’s over. Then obviously new problems arise. Maybe there’s a guidebook out there, but I wasn’t smart enough to look for it. Although this is the only experience I’ve had, I think LA is its own beast and maybe New York is comparable. Otherwise, I don’t believe buying property in most places in America is going to be like this.
I remember the first open house we went to had like 60 people at it and that was just one of the three days. People do all cash offers and they’ll do something called no terms where they basically take whatever it is, because people knock it down and do something else, it’s insane. It wasn’t that bad when we were doing it, it’s way worse now. We couldn’t buy a house right now for sure. We’re very, very, very, very, very lucky with our timing. Then we got to refinance during the pandemic and get a lower interest rate. Our mortgage is almost the same price as my friends who rent two bedrooms. I love our house more than anything and I can’t think of a day when I would want to sell it.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
Be really patient and take care of yourself. It’s not ever fun to deal with rejection or coming to terms with the fact that you don’t have enough money to do the thing that you want to do. Be patient and try to understand that you know just as much as everyone else who’s out there trying. You’ll learn what everything means. Even the word mortgage can be intimidating, google a few things. As soon as you’re even slightly interested, just go by yourself to an open house. You don’t even need a realtor to go with you. You can just figure it out. In some ways, it feels like there's such a huge barrier between you and buying a home that when you realize that no one knows what they're doing, it’s liberating. You can show up and figure it out. It’s just like something you kind of have to experience and go through trial and error to figure out…. Dipping your toes in is the best way to go.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about buying a house?
My husband said that everything takes longer than you think it does. I think he was talking specifically about getting stuff done because people comment all the time on Instagram, “Oh, I want my house to look like this.” It’s definitely fun to be able to do whatever you want and change it up whenever you want—that’s the most fun thing about playing with interior design in a home that you own for sure—but it’s so much work to manage projects. Really the only two that I would actually call projects are the kitchen and the pool and those were like full-time jobs for me to design and pick finishes, find the funding, figure everything out, and manage the contractors. These things don’t happen overnight.
We had literal dirt in our backyard for the first five and a half years that we lived here. We didn’t spend any money on gardening because we just were like, “Wait, it’s an additional how much a month just to water grass?” So we never spent a dime on that. You prioritize the things that are important to you. It worked out because we then decided to completely rehab the backyard and I felt more validated in the fact that we hadn’t spent any money on it. Now we’re going to have to take out a loan, but at least I didn’t spend money on just keeping grass alive.
Name: Arlene and Jean Valero
Location: Sandy Springs, Georgia
What is your relationship with home-owning? Has it always been a dream?
We have both always wanted to own a home. For Jean, the largest pull is that homeownership is a good investment since you’re building equity as you pay down your principal loan balance and the asset appreciates in value. I also share Jean’s practical point of view but one of the biggest pulls for me to want to purchase a home is to be able to truly make a space my own through renovations and design choices that I couldn’t commit to in a rental.
When did your home-buying process begin?
Jean and I moved to Atlanta in early June 2023. Previously, we’d owned our condo in Stamford, Connecticut, and loved the experience of owning our home, so we knew we wanted to buy in the Atlanta area as well. Our original timeline was to start looking in spring 2024, but our timeline was moved up when we found the home we purchased on Zillow in September. We closed on the house in October and it took 30 days to close from when our offer got accepted.
We used the money we got from selling our condo plus four months of savings to purchase this home. We put down 15% and inclusive of closing costs, we spent roughly $66,000 to buy the town house. We used a local lender to get a loan. I highly recommend this to anyone choosing to buy a house, because it is often something that sellers find attractive when you put in an offer and you get a much better rate than if you were to go with a bank. As part of our financing, we bought points to bring down our interest rate 1.5%, which cost 1.5% of the purchase price.
Tell me a little bit about the house. Why do you love it?
I love that when I stepped into the house I felt inspired. The light fixtures, bathrooms, and kitchen in the house screamed 1980s, but the opportunity to renovate and make the home our own was exciting. Something that drew us to the house was the amount of natural light in the home, we loved the large windows. We also both love hardwood floors so we were happy that the house had those throughout the first floor. The layout was also great. The living room and dining room flow into each other which is great for hosting. We were fine with doing renovations (kitchen, bathrooms, etc.) but didn’t want to have to tear down walls or anything like that so a good layout was a must-have. We also loved the traditional and timeless exterior of the house.
How did you choose this house?
Aside from the reasons we loved this house aesthetic-wise, location was a big factor. We wanted to buy a home that was 20 minutes or less from both of our offices. The house is also a three-minute drive from a lot of nature trails and the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, which was perfect for us because we love to go on long hikes with our dog, Archie. Additionally, the house is close to downtown Roswell, which is an area we frequent and houses a lot of our favorite restaurants and coffee shops. When we were looking, we had a list of things we were looking for in a house and this home checked all the boxes and was in our budget. Our priorities were: proximity to work, three bedrooms and two baths, garage, outdoor area or backyard for our dog, and no HOA.
Another big factor for us was affordability. We like to keep our expenses low, at about half of our combined salaries. As a result, a single-family home in the neighborhood that we wanted to be in wasn’t in our budget, so we switched to looking for town houses. This particular town house caught our attention because the exterior looks like a single-family home, since it’s a duplex, and the layout of the house felt less like a town home and more like a single-family house. Furthermore, the house was very well priced. The listing price was comparable to what two-bedroom town homes (with similar finishes) were selling for in the subdivision, even though it was a three-bedroom, so it felt like a good investment opportunity.
What was one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
We can’t think of a mistake we made this time around at the moment (I’m sure we will in a few months), but in the past, when we purchased our condo, we didn’t have an inspection. I highly recommend having an inspection and using it as leverage to negotiate with the seller. Additionally, we’ve heard many horror stories of friends not having inspections and then having to spend thousands of dollars in repairs. When purchasing this time around, we had a sewer inspection which revealed that we would need to install a new sewer line. We were able to get the seller to agree to cover the cost of that expense, so we saved $5,000.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
I would encourage people to not be discouraged if they can’t afford their “dream house” right now. We certainly couldn’t when we bought our house. Slowly building up to purchasing that “forever home” by buying what you can afford and then hopefully making a profit once you sell due to market appreciation and adding value through renovations has proven to be a good strategy for us.
What has been the biggest challenge as a homeowner?
The biggest challenge since purchasing our house has been hiring contractors for renovations and maintenance. This takes a good amount of time and coordination and wasn’t something we previously had to deal with.
Name: Daniela Araya
Location: Catskills, New York
Did you always plan to buy a house?
I grew up in a home, but moved a lot as a kid. My partner, Austin, has lived in two or three houses in his life. The house that he grew up in is where his parents still live. Home is really important to him as it is to me, but for different reasons. He had the house that everyone gathered in. We still go there. It’s so nice to see the photos from when he was like a kid and then us just being in the same dining room. It’s crazy to me because I moved so much when I was little…. You’re always feeling like you’re never really settled. I definitely wanted that feeling of ownership, which is less about actually owning the house, but more about having a place that is yours that you don’t have to reverse anything you do. I was super happy renting and I would paint and do anything to make it feel more like me. I think you can still do that in a rental. But owning was exciting because it's yours and you could really take your time with it and build upon it. It kind of grows with you. So that's been really cool to see.
What made you choose a house in this area?
When I moved to New York City [from Florida] eight or nine years ago, I realized that upstate there was this whole other New York—that there was this whole beautiful green nature-filled zone just a couple of hours away from the city. So when I first moved, I would take these little mini solo road trips and drive around random towns, mostly in the Catskills. I found this tiny town called Bloomville, which is 15 minutes away from where we ended up finding our house. I had been visiting for a long time and then my husband would go up before we met, separately. He loves nature. We were probably somewhere at the same time in those years, but doing it on our own. We ended up finding our house because we worked with a realtor. We had a couple of unsuccessful offers and we didn’t look at a ton of houses actually, because it all came together quickly. It was right during the craziness of November 2020 and before her, we weren’t able to find a real estate agent who wanted to spend the time with someone that had a smaller budget like ours.
What was your timeline for buying a house?
Austin and I have been together for six years now. We were both living in and around Brooklyn and we moved in together. He really loved the city, he still does. I had a different relationship with it by the end of my time there, I was more sure that I wanted to leave. He wanted to leave, but he wasn't really sure when it would happen. When the pandemic happened, we, like many people, started thinking about what we wanted our lives to look like. We were wondering why we were still in the city and questioning a lot of things. Obviously, it’s very expensive to live in the city—anywhere in the city, whether it’s Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens—it’s all very expensive. You don’t get a lot of space if you have a small budget.
We started looking in July or June in the summer of 2020. By that point, we were all working remotely and had no idea it would be possible, but thought to ourselves, “Life is short, we’re really not guaranteed anything.” We felt like we had the opportunity and the flexibility to try and pursue something that was exciting for us. So we started looking in the summer and we found our house in August 2020. It took three months to close, so we didn’t close until November.
Tell me about the house, why did you love it?
We bought it because it’s pretty small in footprint. It’s two floors but the top floor is just the primary bedroom, because it’s an A-frame. It’s probably under 1,300 square feet, which felt really doable for us, and size-wise it was way bigger than what we had ever had in the city. We could really imagine what it would look like after we put our touch on it and did all the renovations that we wanted to do on it. You could see the vision. A lot of the other houses that we looked at had the classic Home Depot renovation. Bad floors they redid to sell and all the fixes that they did were just like not our tastes, which is the worst feeling because then you’re buying a house that has already been flipped. Wanting to undo all the work that they just did felt wrong to us and wasteful.
Our house was fine and you could probably have moved right in and it would be okay. Cosmetically, it was hideous, but it didn’t look bad. But as soon as you started tearing walls down, it was infested with mice. We live in the middle of the woods so this isn’t uncommon even with brand-new homes. So we replaced all the insulation and filled every hole we could find. Now that we’ve busted into every wall and re-insulated, it is very warm. We have a wood stove that truly gets so hot that we’re sweating. There’s no in-between, it’s hilarious. You have to crack a window, otherwise it gets way too hot upstairs. In the beginning, it was so bad. We were freezing, I would have to sleep with a sweater and socks. It was very, very cold. We were worried that was gonna be forever and then we realized that you just have to insulate your house to be warm.
When did you close on the house? How long did it take?
Because we were looking at the height of the pandemic, when interest rates were really low and everyone was leaving the city to get away from people, there were delays with the buying process. The banks who were giving mortgages and everyone was booked up—inspectors, real estate agents, everyone was just so busy that everything dragged out for what felt like forever. Three months after we saw it is when we actually got the keys. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes into it, especially with your bank in between. We got a mortgage and that’s a whole process. You have to get an inspection for the house and there’s all these little steps that I had no idea existed until we went through the process.
Where did you seek advice or find resources to help educate yourself?
We went into it very naively. There wasn’t a ton of research that happened before we started. Once we started looking at houses, we learned by going through the process and meeting with real estate agents. My mom, who is a real estate agent in Florida, shared a bit of insight, but it’s so different from state to state for how the process works. My mom told us to go to our bank and talk to them about getting pre-approved. There’s definitely a lot of things that we didn’t know about or ask questions about that looking back at it, I’m like, “Oh, that’s so silly.” We were just so excited to get a place. Once we were in the process of looking, all we cared about was signing and getting the house and having that process be done, because it's very emotionally taxing.
If you’re anything like me, which is just generally very emotional, when you see a house, you fall in love with it. You imagine your life in it. Then you get rejected, and you have to do that over and over until you find a house. At least that’s how it was for us. We were not fortunate enough to have every offer approved. We put a few different offers in. Looking back, I’m so glad those didn’t work out but it’s just funny, because in the moment you get so into it and your heart is set on one thing. We would go into these spaces and imagine what it would be like living there. Now it’s so obvious that those places didn’t feel like the right fit.
Have you ever adopted an animal? I make the comparison because even when I think about previous dogs we looked at before we got our dog, I was like “This doesn’t really feel right, but also I don’t know if it’s going to feel right.” In terms of the house, we knew we were gonna do work on the house anyway. There were so many considerations going through our heads and it was unnecessary pressure from ourselves to ourselves, pressuring to make this happen quickly. We feel lucky that it worked out the way it did, but it was such a roller coaster when it was happening.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about the process of buying a house?
Everyone talks about how you have to put like 20% down, but that wasn’t true when we bought our house. I think part of the reason why buying a home felt so unattainable is because you think you need to put 20% down. Our real estate agent told us that you don’t always have to put 20% down and it’s not as important to every buyer. This was a lot better for us because we didn’t have to spend our entire life savings on our house. We bought the house for $176,000 and put 10% down with a mortgage.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
This sounds so simple, but it’s really helpful to get clear on what’s important to you. There are so many different factors that go into it. Once you start looking at houses, it all kind of blends together in my opinion. Getting clear on things like are you going to live there full-time? I think that impacts a lot of things. We have a mile-long driveway and it’s all uphill and it’s an unpaved dirt road. We knew it was gonna be a mess and we could only assume how bad it would get in the winter. A lot has gone into the driveway. It’s a whole thing that we didn’t even think about and I don’t regret any of it, but we just hadn’t really thought that through as much.
What has been the biggest challenge as a homeowner?
When you’re a homeowner, you’re responsible for anything that goes wrong, which is expected. I guess I didn’t expect it to happen so quickly. When we closed on our house, three days after closing, our water pump broke. The house is very remote and on the top of a hill. That day it broke, we just ran out of water and it was in November so it was freezing. We had no idea what was happening. We also didn't know anyone in the area to help us with this. We knew friends who lived 30 minutes away from us but every town is so different. We thought we would have more time to find those people and then this happened. It was so expensive. Our water pump is hundreds of feet down underneath the house and they had to dig it up. I think it was like a $5,000 project. I was like, “Okay, there goes any of the fun renovations I wanted to do immediately.”
Name: Jamie Lenore McKillop
Location: Venice Beach in Los Angeles, California
What motivated you to buy a home when you did?
Throughout my 20s I definitely moved around a lot for one reason or another, which is pretty common. There was definitely an appeal to having a little bit more consistency. Situationally where I was in my life, I had met my fiancé, and for logistical reasons and financial reasons, that made it a lot easier. It felt like we were building a life together. It made the option to live in a house and own a home more realistic. We bought the house at the very end of 2019 right before the pandemic. We both have very similar styles, so we had a sense of how we wanted the house to look. We probably toured about three or five, and we weren’t in a huge rush because it wasn’t the pandemic. It’s not like we had kids or anything so there wasn’t a strong impetus for needing to make the jump and buy a house. As soon as we saw this one, it was pretty much a yes, especially because the design features it had were so special that we really felt like we couldn't find anything else similar to that.
Tell me about your house, why do you love it?
This house visually had such unique characteristics. I’m really drawn to the midcentury-modern style, which is part of the history of LA. There are so many great midcentury-modern homes in the city, but I really felt like this one in particular had a unique point of view and special design features. It has the pistachio kitchen, a hidden red bar, and an exposed staircase. On the second floor, we have this really nice wood beam ceiling that runs throughout the house. There was already amazing groundwork already present in the house. While we may want to make some updates, great bones were already there. For us, it was about maintaining the integrity of the house, rather than seeing it as something that we wanted to redo.
What was one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
Expect the unexpected. We bought the home right before COVID and that was really a godsend for us to be able to have the home instead of a smaller apartment. But it meant that we configured the home differently than maybe we would have had COVID already happened. For instance, there was a built-in desk in the sunroom that we actually took out because we didn’t need an at-home office at the time. I really wished we had kept because now I just have a desk in our guest bedroom, which is fine.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about the process of buying a house?
In my case, I got really lucky that we found this really unique home that I felt was still very true to my personal style. But I would also say that it doesn’t have to be perfect from the beginning. If you find yourself considering a house that’s a little bit more of a blank slate, I do think there are things that you can do to achieve the look that you want. It just might mean taking a little extra care and consideration with some of the updates that you make or how you design or style it.
Don’t be afraid of looking at houses that don’t have staged photos in the listening. When you’re looking online, obviously houses where they’ve taken the extra step to stage them and get great photography are going to look a lot more exciting than houses where it’s clearly just the current owners. By not looking at the houses with non-staged photos, you may be missing out on a really great house that actually is better priced than some of those other houses. Don’t rule out those houses. Go and try to look past if it’s not staged and also in the same vein, try to look past if it is staged and be honest with yourself. Ask yourself: How would it look if you were to live in it with your stuff?
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
If the house does require certain updates or renovations, which I think is pretty common unless it’s totally new, I’d recommend looking for a place where the updates will actually increase the property value of the house. For instance, we redid our primary bathroom. There was nothing unusable about it, it was just a little bit old and dated so we redid the tiles and fixtures. The updates really made it beautiful and impactful, but in a way that will also eventually increase the property value of the home. Ideally, I would try to avoid houses that need types of updates that aren’t visible or the next owner won’t really appreciate or care about. Ideally, it wouldn’t be anything structural or things that you can't see. If you’re going to make updates, hopefully they will be things that make the house feel and look a little more exciting.
If possible, once you find your home, try to get the direct contact of the previous owner, especially if it’s an older home. In our case, the previous owner of our home was an older couple that had lived there for quite a long time. That really came in handy for us in terms of getting the recommendations for a handyman, gardener, plumber, things like that. Especially if it’s an older home and the previous owner had these people who were working on it for a while, they’re going to be really familiar with the home and they can really be a godsend if little things break. Things need updates and if these people know that home really well, they’ll be able to save you a lot of time and energy. I also just think it’s a nice thing to do and a nice way to continue the tradition of the home. We have a handyman who the previous owners had worked with for years and years. They’ve helped us with little things around the house and he has also become a friend.
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Name: Chelsea Leibow Farrell
Location: West Orange, New Jersey
Why did you choose to buy a home in New Jersey?
I had been living in New York for almost 15 years and my husband had been there for a similar amount of time. I was having a really hard time figuring out where to go next, if anywhere. Ideally, it would have been great to stay in the city and buy a town house in Cobble Hill, but we don’t have that kind of money. What we were looking at in terms of lifestyle to buy in New York, especially in Brooklyn where we were living, we probably wouldn’t have been able to afford more than a two bedroom apartment, probably with no outdoor space. We didn’t want to invest in something that was gonna feel small. It’s probably the most money most of us will spend on one single thing in our lives. Making sure that you’re getting what you want is so important. We really didn’t know where we were gonna go. We love New York, both of us, maybe me a little bit more so than him because I work in PR. I still wanted and needed to be close to the city for clients and client events, meeting with journalists and that sort of thing. I literally googled “least suburby suburb of New York” and Maplewood, New Jersey, came up. It’s on every list. People kind of joke that it’s called Brooklyn West now, because so many people from the city come and buy homes there. That was sort of my starting point.
It’s funny because up until then when my husband had mentioned Jersey, I was like, “Over my dead body, I will not be moving to New Jersey.” I was kind of a snob about it. When I started doing my own research this area kept coming up, so we started coming out here on the weekends during the pandemic and exploring. Maplewood was the first town that we knew of and but then there’s all these adjacent towns, including South Orange and West Orange that all share resources. We really just fell in love with it. It’s still close enough to the city, we can get into New York in like 40 minutes on the train. The most important thing for us was that the community still felt really diverse. That was the one thing that we felt we were probably going to have to compromise on moving to the suburbs, but this area is super diverse. We wanted to make sure that as we move into the next phase of our lives and have children that they’re able to be exposed to other cultures and other points of view. Those were sort of the factors that went into it, but honestly I never pictured myself ending up here.
Was buying a house always an important goal for you?
Buying a home has always been a huge goal for me. My parents are people that really love to host and really cultivated a home where that was possible. Some of my best memories growing up are the big parties that my parents had or when my brother and I got older, the parties that we had as teenagers. My parents had this open door policy with their friends and with our friends. Homeownership was something that I always wanted. Unfortunately, I think for a lot of people in our generation, homeownership feels like it’s something that’s increasingly out of most people’s grasp. While I grew up in a very privileged situation, for most of my adult life, I’ve not relied on my parents financially. There were certainly times in my 20s, where I was like, “Oh, there’s probably no way I would be able to do this.”
There were definitely times where I thought it probably wasn’t something that would materialize for me. It’s been a bit of a journey to get here. I’m super grateful that we bought this house exactly when we bought it because I do think that for a majority of our generation, the window of opportunity is closing. Things are getting so outlandishly expensive and it doesn’t seem like there’s any reprieve coming and obviously wages are not staying congruent with the housing market. It’s something that I’m super aware of and feel really, really grateful for.
When did you start saving for a home?
I had always been saving in a sort of nebulous way. I wasn’t entirely sure what all the money was going to go to, but thought probably it would go to a house. I started when I was like 26 or 27 and it was not a ton, it really varied depending on the month or where I was in my career at that point. There were stretches of time where I could be a little bit more aggressive putting $1,000 or $500 away in a month to save and know that money was untouchable. For me, that was a big thing because I’m a spender and my husband is not. A big mindset shift for me was like, “Okay, I’m putting all of this money away for me.” I’m not giving financial advice, but for me, I put all of that untouchable money into an investment account. I used Wealthfront and didn’t do anything fancy with it, I think my risk level for the account was moderate to low. I didn’t want to do anything crazy risky.
I kept squirreling money away into that account and we ended up buying our house when I was 32. That money grew in a big way without me really having to think about it, I just kept adding to it over time. Having a partner also helped, because it became a combined forces situation with combined incomes and combined savings. As well as I’ve been doing in my career, especially from 27 on, I could not have bought this house alone. It did take a while to save. It became much more focused on buying a house in 2020 when I turned 30. We met with my parents’ financial planners to get a sense of our finances holistically and what we could probably afford. It took about two years from doing that financial planning session and understanding what we could probably afford to actually pulling the trigger and buying the house.
What was your home-buying process like?
We had a bit of an unorthodox situation. We had been coming out to this area randomly on the weekends here or there for the last few years. Whenever we would come, we would just find open houses and go to them treating it like a HGTV episode. We weren’t seriously looking and after the open house, we’d talk through what we liked or would change. I think it’s important to do that, before you’re ready. I’ll caveat that by saying that you have impulse control. If you’re really not ready to buy and you have the personality where you could fall in love with something and then get obsessed with it, then maybe don’t do that. I would really recommend going to the area if it’s not where you currently live and go to open houses to see what the inventory is like. When we started doing our research trips, we would go to these houses that were really beautiful but older—my husband is 6’3” and we found out really quickly that the first thing that we should do when we go to a house is go to the basement because if he can’t stand up in the basement, there’s no point in getting the house.
Fast-forward to the summer of 2022, we had been going to the beach a lot and decided to visit Maplewood, South Orange, and West Orange, and go to some open houses. Again, not thinking that we were ready to buy—we were initially going to start the official process in the spring of 2023. We were in the car planning to go home and I was like, “Well, there’s just one more house.” I showed him the listing and he was like, “Yeah, it looks interesting. Let’s just go and then we’ll go home.” So we pulled up and it was this house. We walked through the open house and we were both just really shocked. It checked off so many things on our wish list, this is the only house that we had ever seen that we were like, “Wow.” I realized that this was bad and I was doing the thing that I told everybody not to do. When we got in the car we were both like, “We could put in an offer just to see what the process is like. We know we’re not gonna get the house. Maybe we could try?”
Luckily, I had already connected with a real estate agent on Instagram in the area and we had stayed in touch, and thank God we did because we were in this situation where we were potentially going to put an offer in on this house and we didn’t have anything lined up. I called her and was like, “Hey, we saw this house and we’re really interested in it. What do we do?” She asked if we were pre-approved and I was like, “No, we’re not anything.” She told us that the house would be shown on Saturday and Sunday, and then by Tuesday best and final offers would be due. It was already Saturday and we didn’t know if we could even get pre-approved in time because most mortgage brokers don’t work weekends, but our real estate agent really pulled through and set us up with an incredible mortgage broker who worked on the weekend and got it turned around for us. We put in the offer and it happened so quickly I didn’t really have time to think about it that much. We weren’t really ready, but when we found the house we quickly made ourselves ready because it was the right house for us.
How did you finance your house?
Because we had talked with the financial planner about what we could afford, we had an idea of that. We were still pre-approved for like $200,000 more than we ended up even paying for this house. If you get pre-approved up to a certain amount, especially when it’s your first home, and say you’re looking at a $700,000 range, and you get pre-approved up to almost a million, that can feel really crazy. You start thinking that maybe you should start looking at bigger houses. My advice would be: No, don’t do that. Just because you’re approved up to a certain amount, that doesn’t take into account things like what your comfort level is and what other things that you have to spend money on every month. For us, we were clear we wanted to keep it in a certain range. Now, we still went over our top, like $100,000 over, and that might not be a decision for everybody. For us, it made sense because we’re thinking about the longevity of the house.
It’s important to be comfortable with what your mortgage payments are going to be and know the taxes and know all of that combined along with your other expenses. In our case, we’re paying almost double our rents. So it wasn’t a situation where we went from spending money on rent to saving on our mortgage, but to us it was worth the expense. It’s also important to know your maxes in your head. If you go over intentionally, and if you’re making this decision with a partner, it’s super important that you’re both on the same page about your comfort there. Finances are tricky to talk about, but I think it's really really important that you go into it clear-eyed. We were definitely scared and this whole process was terrifying. There were multiple times where I was sure it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, especially in the first few months, moving into the house can feel really overwhelming.
What has been the biggest challenge as a homeowner?
The biggest challenge for me and for my husband was feeling really overwhelmed when we first moved into the house. We did buy a house that was a bit of a stretch for us, but the house doesn’t need any big work. Everything that we’ve done has been cosmetic, like painting things or changing out light fixtures. I could not even begin to fathom the stress of buying a house and then having to do gut renovations on top of it. I mean godspeed, I know plenty of people who are doing that and doing that successfully but I feel like just the stress alone of buying the house was enough.
The biggest challenge was living here in the first couple of months and adjusting to our new reality especially because we were going from a situation where we were really financially very comfortable. In Brooklyn, we were living in a rent controlled apartment and it was very double income, no kids. It was hard because we moved in right before the holidays and our credit card was within the last inch of its life. We both had moments of breaking down being like, “Did we just make a huge mistake?” I think just taking a breath and being like, “This is just a hard transition.” I wish I had a little bit more patience with myself and accepted it wasn’t going to feel like home right away, but it would get better.
What do you wish you knew before starting the home-buying process?
It’s really important to listen to your gut, make sure that you’re doing what’s right for you, and you feel comfortable. Don’t do anything that you feel pressured into. There’s no worse way to make a decision than by feeling really panicked and stressed, and I’m really glad and feel so fortunate that we got the first house we ever put an offer in on. I have heard horror stories about people who were looking for houses for years or put in offers on 15 to 20 houses and don’t even know what they're looking at any more. I think it’s really hard to make a sound decision from that place.
If you can come into such an important financial decision from a really grounded place, where you have like a team also behind you that you trust and everyone's on the same page about, I do think you’re going to be happy with your decision. Sometimes not making a decision can be a security blanket. Sometimes you need to be pushed off the ledge. The reality is that unless you’re super, super wealthy, most people are gonna feel pretty house poor when they first buy a house. You’ve just given all of your savings over and also then in most cases, will need to furnish an entire house. But you don’t have to do everything all at once and can just take it a day at a time.
Name: Diana Farberov
Location: Catskills, New York
Did you always want to buy a house?
I spent most of my life growing up in northern New Jersey. My parents bought a house and they had kids relatively young. Buying the house in New Jersey was a really big deal for them because they’re immigrants. As a kid you take it for granted, especially when you’re growing up around it, but I definitely saw my parents go through different phases of construction and I’ve seen how much time, money, effort and love they’ve put into this house and how much has changed over the years. I definitely respect the home owning process.
For both my husband and I, buying a home is something that has been on our mind for a really long time. We realized pretty quickly after college that when renting, money is leaving and you’re not really getting an asset in return. It may allow you to live in a neighborhood that you really enjoy and gives you flexibility, but we wanted to really have an asset that could grow with us and be part of our life. We were pretty good savers from the start. We’re fortunate that we both work corporate jobs and can contribute equally. The realistic element to it is that we were saving for years. Truthfully, it wasn’t like one day we said, “Okay, let’s do this.” Once we settled on a concept, it took two years of truly planning for the purchase and being then in a position to make the purchase.
Where did you seek advice or find resources to help educate yourself?
Our real estate agent was a huge value-add. People don’t entirely realize you can start by just looking online. At a certain point pretty early on, we decided we wanted to commit to this area. The steps were to settle on a location, create a radius, and then, find a real estate agent that you trust. Pretty much all agents are qualified, but it’s about who you vibe with because you’re putting a lot of trust in this person. We first met with our agent a year before we actually purchased our plot of land. We looked at something, but weren't financially in a position to purchase at that time, so we kept in touch. A year later, he started reaching out again and said, “Hey, I’ve got something that’s going to come on the market this upcoming weekend.” We saw it the first weekend that it was listed and put an offer within two days. Once you’re ready, you have to move fast. I give Allen full credit because he took a lot of the initiative, but the internet is full of good information. We would google stuff but also YouTube is really helpful because you get someone who talks you through it. There is information out there, you just have to be willing to find it.
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring homeowners?
Find ways to make your budget work for what you want to do. You don’t have to tackle everything at once. Yes, you might hate that bathroom, but make it a goal like, “ I’m going to save to make this purchase.” I really wanted House of Hackney wallpaper in the powder room, I was like “I want this to be my birthday gift.” You can pick and choose the little things. The point is, you’re doing you’re doing this for yourself. Make sure it’s something that you want that makes you happy, don’t try to do it to impress someone else. If you want to save money, you have to do it yourself. You have to assign a value to what you do or don’t want to do. There’s certain things even now where we’re like, “Well, we can do the drywall, but it’s so time consuming and messy.” So if I get a bid that’s below X number, it’s worth us paying them and having someone else do it. You have to weigh your costs.
What was one mistake you made during the home-buying process?
Not looking into all of the costs. We could have always spent more time looking at all the varying costs of building a home and external factors. It’s not just construction, it’s also land excavation, power, propane, all these things that are added costs that are necessary to have a livable home. We could have better accounted for it. We would have budgeted slightly differently had we truly had a full picture. Luckily we had savings and we phased things. It’s worth mentioning to do your research because there are a lot of financing options out there. It might take longer and there's probably more paperwork involved. But you can afford to do it. Most people can afford to own a house. You just have to find your parameters and do your research.
What do you think is the biggest misconception about homeownership?
People think that you have to have a lot of money to buy a house, this especially applies to millennials or younger people living in metropolitan areas like New York and LA. If you really want to buy something, you have to look beyond your favorite neighborhood. Our apartment in Bay Ridge is literally the end of the R line. It’s a lovely homey neighborhood, but we sacrificed on proximity to Manhattan in order to be able to afford something. Yes, location is important, but we’ve got other things and our apartment is more affordable.
You don’t have to be rich to do this. There are plenty of financing options so make sure you look into those and do your research. You can leverage the money that you have to get these different types of loans. For us, it was a construction loan. We did a lot of work before the construction loan because you have to have a lot of documentation and proof of concept. I would say a business loan and a construction loan are extremely similar.
