First Time House Buying Adventures

First Time House Buying Adventures

Posted on November 26th, 2009 Huis-Huis No comments

This post contains the experiences of Chris, a first time home buyer who sent us an account of his experience buying property for the first time:

From what I hear, buying or selling a home can be a stressful time – even for experienced property owners in the best of markets, and even more so when times are tough and the real estate outlook is gloomy.

As a first time buyer, I can tell you it helps to have a real estate agent you can trust.

Our agent was a family friend who has been in the business for years and knew the area very well. She proved to be a superb negotiator and her experience gave us the upper hand in the home buying process. Yet, there were still things for which we were unprepared as new homeowners.

We began our house search at the start of 2009. The wife just fell pregnant and we figured needed a little extra space to spread out. We were sure the home market was at rock bottom and prices couldn’t fall any further. That proved to be a mistake – oops!

After two months, we found a “reasonably priced” house, with just enough space for our new  family. We figured we got a pretty good feel for the home and surrounding area, and after our second viewing of the house, we decided that that was it, the one for us. We were ready to make an offer.

After offers and counter-offers back and forth for a while, we got the sellers to accept a price quite a bit lower than what they were asking for. We felt we had won the negotiating battle. It seemed to us as if we were really pulling one over on those poor folks. And after receiving a positive report from a professional home inspector and the bank’s valuator found more than enough value, we felt even better about our purchase.

The home inspection report found that the house was in decent shape overall, but identified a number of minor issues. And to our surprise, the sellers agreed to adjust the purchase price even further. Poor suckers!

But now that we’re going into our sixth month of home ownership, looking back, we realise that the price concessions we agreed to, for those “minor” defects, were less than the actual cost of solving the problems.

Who knew paving a driveway was that expensive? And when did hot water geysers start sucking so much expensive electricity? And I still wrestle with the garage door every time I want to get the car in or out. That magical electric garage door opener we promised ourselves, before transfer of ownership, has since been pushed to the “some day” dream pile.

Next year we’re definitely looking at replacing the electric geyser with a solar hot water system. And we’ll probably invest in more blankets for winter, and resort to nudism in summer, because the under-floor heating and icy air conditioners are surely going to use too much electricity.

It doesn’t feel quite as if we duped those sellers so much anymore. Oh well, that’s home ownership for you! I guess it’s true what they say: Buyer beware!