What To Expect When You're Expecting,To Buy A House By: Tori Ralyea

What To Expect When You're Expecting,To Buy A House

By: Tori Ralyea

Just a condo. Just a townhouse. Just an apartment sixteen stories high. A house not our own. With cars honking, trash overflowing. Broken elevators, broken gates, and no pets allowed,except for a price. The faint arguing heard through the paper thin walls. Renew your lease-that's another ten percent increase.

Just a house lined in a row, a space for all of us to go, more expensive than long long ago.

In February 2024, when the housing market in San Diego was still mostly atrocious and interest rates were at record highs, we decided to start out our adventure to buy a house in the most desirable, most sought after, most competitive place to live in America.

My first thought was: It will be fine… right?

I grew up in Los Angeles’s pleasant but bland suburbs, where the only thing happening in our little town was Six Flags Magic Mountain. You were forced to love roller coasters or there would be nothing else to do, except get excited to go to one of the towns’ “hip” and “new”… chain restaurants. I couldn’t wait to get out, and get to see the world. When I escaped cookie-cutter suburbia for college in San Diego, I swore I’d never move back. 

Nearly 15 years later, my now husband Nic and I found ourselves unable to afford any kind of house in San Diego “proper”. We realized we were going to have to branch out a bit, or a lot a bit. Nic had always wanted to move back toward his hometown in Encinitas, and we recognized the benefits of being closer to family, which had us looking for houses in San Diego’s North County. Plus, you get a lot more bang for your buck up in the suburbs. I was strongly starting to suspect I might not hate it, back in a different suburbia.

Hunting for Houses

At first we just wanted to see what was out there, and did what normal interested buyers do, start on zillow.  I became a zillow scavenger. I narrowed our search,applied all the filters, made an excel sheet, and linked all the houses along with descriptions to what I thought were the houses we actually wanted to be seeing, and checked every night for new and upcoming houses. I learned that pictures aren’t everything, some houses look better based on the pictures, and some look worse. I learned how to carefully analyze the pictures online to figure out the layout and square footage to figure out if it’s even worth the trip to go see. I learned not to waste time going to every house, but instead prioritize which houses we really want to go see. Then we had to learn how to get pre-approved for a loan and all the many documents you need to do so:credit score, driver’s license, social security card,pay stubs, tax returns, bank statements,retirement account statements, your company’s HR contact information, and hopefully you remember all the addresses of the places you’ve lived over the past 10 years for your rental history because I sure didn’t. At long last, we were off to the races!

I got to put my love of HGTV to use in knowing what can be renovated and what can’t. I learned that my husband would love a fixer-upper and I…would prefer something that is more turnkey, a new term I’ve also learned. I learned that location is my husband's top priority, whereas mine is price versus amount of rooms versus square footage; which I thought was just a given. Spoiler- it's not. I’ve learned a good yard can throw all that out the window, we apparently love a good yard, something else that we started learning quickly. I learned that sometimes we won’t agree on every house and that’s okay, it must not be the house for us.

This process has had me thinking back to the houses, more like the townhouses and condos I grew up in,  compared to the real houses with real yards my husband grew up accustomed to in San Diego. As a kid I never really thought much about how we didn’t ever have a front yard or back yard, but instead a community park and a community pool which I LOVED and would spend all my free time at. I never thought about how I had less than others because of that. So does it really matter if we end up in a townhouse without that yard? How much are we willing to spend for that yard? How much are we willing to send to an HOA to get a community pool that my husband and I still do really adore? If we wait too long, will the prices keep rising? How much will interest rates rise? What if there's a crash in the housing market after we sell our souls? How much are we willing to sacrifice to the housing gods over the next 30 years?

What they don’t tell you

I learned that attempting to buy a house takes as much time as a part time or maybe even full time job depending on how often you want to be searching for these elusive homes. I learned if you don’t go right away, the houses will be gone by the next weekend, at least in this current sellers market. Want to go visit your family for a holiday? Can’t- gotta go look at some houses. Want to sleep in after a long week working with the youths? Can’t- gotta be up at 8am for an open house. Want an older home? Prepare for the dozens of things that's wrong with it. Want a brand new townhouse? Here’s some Mello-Roos tax to help pay off the infrastructure project of this home to add on top of all your other monthly expenses, another new house vocabulary word to add to the growing list.

What seemed so fun and exciting in the beginning turned out to be so draining and exhausting. We were thrilled when we finally found a house we wanted to put an offer on. On the first offer, the house ended up going 100 thousand dollars over the asking price. Second offer, all cash offer- a new term to add to the list. Third offer, the owners were already in escrow before we even walked into the open house, they were just trying to get the current couple to close faster. Eventually I stopped keeping track of all the houses we didn’t get, I stopped keeping track of all the little visions of us in these houses that never came to be. After putting in so many offers that kept getting turned down, a little bit of hope and excitement went down the drain each time, my husband even more so than me. I’ve learned that you definitely aren’t going to get the house you want on the first, fifth, or even eighth try. I’ve learned you have to be resilient and not put too much hope into a single house. 

“Aren’t You So Excited?” Yes…but also, no.

Three months and probably fifty houses later, we did it! We found a house that was perfect for us, and they finally accepted our offer! We were a little nervous to tell people at first because there must be something wrong with it, right? But we found ourselves in escrow, another new term I’ve learned and learned how to spell it correctly. 

Don’t forget, you also have to make sure to get your house inspected to find out all the things that are wrong with it now, what will be wrong with it in a few months, and what will be wrong with it in a few years. Still want this house? Want to go back on the housing hunt? Not particularly, but here we are.

Shouldn’t this be the exciting part? It would be, if I didn’t feel like I was drowning in mounds of paperwork, which I definitely was not prepared for. You feel like you should be reading every paper to be a responsible homeowner, to be able to sign all of the papers, but everything is also apparently URGENT, or at least they act that way, along with the dozens of emails that are also URGENT. They don’t warn you how time consuming all of this is.They don’t warn you that you should have the rest of your schedule cleared for the month. That you need to be ready to answer calls and emails in the middle of the work day. How does anyone do that? It just all ended up coming at the worst time for me. I was barely keeping my head above water with all the escrow papers, the last month of school, report cards, hiring paperwork, and somehow also getting a presentation ready. Want to throw a cold or two in there too? 

My thought was: I am not fine.

In which I count bugs

Eventually, we made it. All the papers were signed, we got the keys, and we were officially homeowners! Now all we have to do is fix all of those URGENT things that needed to be fixed for the house along with a long list of other things to do to get out of our old apartment and get our house move in ready. Do the lists of things ever end? Is this what being a real adult is like? Let’s just pile on some more stress. 

I learned that you should clear your calendar when starting the home buying process. All of it, from finding a home, signing the papers, and moving it all takes an incredible amount of time and energy that I did not have and was not prepared for. I spread myself too thin and it made what could have been a very joyful home buying experience into one of the most stressful times of my life. One thing I didn’t figure out that I would advise for anyone starting their home buying process, figure out a way to decompress and unload that stress.

I’ve learned that most things in the housing world are worth the money. I’ve learned that hiring movers are ALWAYS. WORTH. THE. MONEY. Have some termites, rats, bugs? Hire someone. Need some blinds? Hire someone. Toilet leaking? Hire them fast.

Some things are not worth it if you have the time, energy, and you are capable. Need a fan installed but think you can do it? It’s going to require a lot of holes in walls but it will be worth it. Need to paint? You can probably do that. Clear the gutters? You’ve got it. I’ve learned that not everything will come easy, and that is just part of the process. I’ve learned that we put a lot of this stress on ourselves into making our house perfect, but who needs perfect? It will all work out eventually in the end.

The end (for now)

Not a condo. Not a townhouse. Not an apartment sixteen stories high. A house all our own. With birds chirping from somewhere within our trees, our comfy, cozy couch. Our vaulted ceilings and our sky lights. My games waiting to be played and my books waiting to be read. Nobody to monitor us. Nobody’s elevator to wait up after. Nobody’s footsteps above us. 

Only a house as calm as the winds that blow, a space for myself to go, ready for our family to grow.