I’ve been in the market to buy a house and have had a strange set of set-backs even before I’ve really even gotten started.
Started with the pre-approval. I called my bank, told them what I wanted to do and made an appointment. I showed up on time and got handed off to another staff member – who couldn’t help. She had to call their loan guy. So, I sat there in her office and talked to the loan guy who was pretty insistent that I have already picked out a house before I did the pre-approval – even though my realtor told me the opposite. Finally got through the paperwork and figured, well, I’m new and I don’t know what I’m doing. Fair enough.
My realtor – who’s also the wife of my co-worker – and she got my list of parameters and sent me an online search of about 250 locations. I narrowed those down to 30, she narrowed them down again to those that were still available and we had a really great meeting and started planning looking at places.
And then she sort of resigned – not enough time to devote to the scheduling and sort of outside of her territory. She handed me off to her mentor to help me go forward. I was a little disappointed, but I understand this can be a time consuming process and it could be difficult to do this and get their photography business off the ground. Or further off the ground – they’ve already done some amazing work.
So, talked to the new realtor and made plans to meet with her on Saturday. Then she called again today and said she reviewed the houses we were to look at and didn’t like 90% of them. So, she’s scrapping the list and starting fresh to get houses with a better resale value. She also raised the price range to uncomfortable levels and the radius from my current job further than I wanted.
I need to email her and sort of lay down the law on my parameters. I don’t want to extend my commute that far and I will need a new car at some point, so I don’t want to break my bank. Also, I’d like to eat from time to time.
It’s frustrating, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. The tour of homes on Saturday will include about 30 locations – if nothing really jumps out at me I may need to go to plan B. Or is that plan C? D? I don’t know where I’m at right now.
At this point, moving under my desk at work is looking pretty nice.