Beware the ninja realtors!

Recently The Husband and I celebrated a special anniversary. We got married a couple years ago. Glorious as that day was, that is not the anniversary I wish to write about today. Today I want to celebrate our recent one year anniversary of buying our house. Why is that so special, you ask? Because it means we will never have to go through the home buying process again.

At least that’s the goal. We’ll see what life throws at us. But if we have any say in the matter, we’re staying in this house until we die. And then we plan to haunt it a bit to make sure the new owners don’t get any crazy ideas about what to do with the house.

I’ve been thinking about the awfulness of the home buying process a lot lately. Our neighborhood is still in development. As I write this post, there is an excavation crew working on the lot next door digging out the basement for a new build. There’s also a crew working on the lot behind us AND the lot across the street. We are surrounded by construction and it serves as a perpetual reminder of how awful house hunting can be.

Perhaps you haven’t been through the process. If that’s the case, let me walk you through it. I can assure you it differs greatly than what you see on house hunting TV shows. Allow me to compare and contrast:

TV SHOW: A couple decides to find their dream house. They are young, fit, and attractive. They have glamorous jobs where they only work approximately 40 hours a year and have three months paid vacation. No, that’s not a typo. Not weeks, MONTHS. They never state their salaries, but they must be pretty snazzy, because they always have an insanely high budget. What makes matters worse is that they don’t believe their half million dollar budget is insanely high. They’re worried about what they’re able to find with their “modest” budget and if it will have the “character” and “personality” they want. “Character” and “personality” are apparently the most desirable house qualities in TV land, as opposed to things like “number of bathrooms” and “having a functional roof.” Stuff like that isn’t sexy enough for TV, I guess.

Anyways, so the house hunting couple has an equally glamorous realtor who has all the time in the world to show them All The Houses. And these houses are huge and glitzy and amazing. But the house hunting couple is unimpressed. “I don’t know if this 10,000 square foot kitchen and dining room suite will be big enough,” whines the wife. “We REALLY like to entertain, so we need lots of room.” (That’s another buzzword — “entertain.” Couples on these house hunting shows always want to entertain hordes of guests all the time. I suppose if you have an impressive salary and gobs of time off, you could do such things.)

So what’s the drama, you ask? Because there HAS to be drama. Is it a competing bid? Something out of their price range? Of course not! It’s a disagreement between the couple. The husband is rooting for House A, because it has a 20,000 square foot lower level that he thinks would make a great man cave. But the wife has her heart set on House B, because it has a built in display case that would be PERFECT for highlighting her collection of antique laminated price tags from Aeropostale. Now, House C would have a nice blend of both things, and it has lots of CHARACTER. But they would prefer to have a battle of the wills.

Eventually, they settle on a house and by the end of the episode they’re happily moving in.

REALITY: You have a young-ish thirtysomething couple like The Husband and myself. We see plenty of houses we like online, but by the time we can try and make an appointment to see them, they’ve gone into contract. Or they have ridiculous availability for when they’re willing to show the house. Eventually, we manage to actually get to see a house. If we’re lucky, we might get to see two in one night. We have approximately 30 seconds to decide on whether or not we’re interested in a house before someone else comes along to put in an offer. Sometimes I swear there are competing realtors hiding in the bushes waiting to strike with a bid. Our budget is fairly good, but it will not buy us a mansion. I would describe our budget as “four bedroom strong.” There will be no man caves or 10,000 square foot kitchen megaplexes in our house, that’s for sure.

By some miracle, we get to a point where we find a house that is agreeable AND we manage to outsmart the competing ninja realtors long enough to get our bid in first. It gets accepted after a couple of counter offers and negotiations. The rich reality TV couple have already thrown their first party before we’ve reached the point of having an appraisal.

Weeks and weeks and weeks of paperwork and phone calls follow. The mortgage underwriters want my taxes and husband’s taxes and The Cat’s taxes. They want our job history, residence history, copies of our bank statements, copies of our social security cards, background checks, arrest records, copies of our grade school report cards, etc. The more ridiculous and obscure the document, the more they insist it is CRUCIAL to being able to approve our home loan. Sometimes I think underwriters are just on a giant scavenger hunt to see who can scare up the most random thing. (“Hey Bev! I got my people to dig up their 4th grade yearbooks!” “That’s nothing, Earl. I convinced my guy that we couldn’t approve his loan without a notarized copy of their kindergarten graduation certificates!”)

Finally you get a date to close on the house. And then you get to sign more and more papers until your hand is about to fall off. Then maybe — just maybe — they’ll let you have keys to your new house.

And then if you already owned a house (like we did) you get the joys of selling a house, which is its own special kind of hell. But that’s a story for another day.

So as you can see, house buying is no fun. At least not when you’re the one doing the buying. I love telling other people what they should look for in a house. I recommend at least two bathrooms. Basements are nice too. And of course you’ll need a generous supply of character.

Or money. Money works too.