We Bought a House!
Y’all! I am SO excited about this announcement. Two years ago, we were living in East Tennessee, thinking about where we wanted to put down roots. We weren’t super close to either side of the family, and we weren’t in love with where we were in our careers either. We decided to make the move across the country to live closer to my family in the Denver, CO area, and now, a year later, we are buying our first home. It’s definitely been a challenging year full of changes, but we are so blessed to finally have a place to call our own.
After living in apartments for almost five years, we decided we should start looking for a long-term investment, as well as some place that we could make our own. We were also tired of having to walk up and down three flights of stairs every time our dog needed to go outside. Besides, the apartment life isn’t the most glamorous, especially when you live in a shoe box and pay the same as a mortgage. (I love my parents, but did they have to pick such a dang expensive city to live in?) With our lease ending in October, we decided to start browsing mid-July. This date fluctuated during the beginning of the year, especially when Covid shut down the entire nation and we weren’t sure if it would affect the housing market. Once we realized that the Denver market was most definitely not going anywhere except up, we decided to bite the bullet and call a realtor.
We scheduled an introductory meeting - which, during a pandemic, was interesting to say the least - and went over our expectations. What are we looking for in a house, what are some non-negotiables, price range, location, etc. Prior to this meeting, we had also gotten in touch with a mortgage lender to figure out how much we could afford and go over all that not-so-fun but necessary financial work that goes into buying a house. Already having an idea of what you want and what you can afford are important when going into your meeting with a realtor.
I’m sure most of you know the basics of how house hunting goes; you probably know more about it than I do if I’m being honest. Our realtor is lovely, and she really helped guide us through the whole process. Her goal was to get us into a house we loved, not just sell us a house as quickly as possible and collect her dues, which I really appreciated.
Let me give you a little background on the Denver housing market. It’s fast, it’s aggressive, and it’s “an extreme seller’s market”. Houses are on and off within 24 hours. Our first week of looking, we agreed to look at 2 homes on Saturday. They were both listed on Thursday. By Friday, one had already accepted an offer and had closed showings. We didn’t like the home we did see, but even still, by Monday, it was off the market as well. Our realtor also told us to expect to bid over asking price - up to $30k or more in some cases. Yep, you read that right. None of this under-bidding in hopes of snagging a deal. If you even bid right at asking price, your offer is practically non-existent to the seller.
After our initial meeting with our realtor, she set us up in the MLS portal and we were officially house hunting. Because she anticipated our need to bid up, she actually set our listing price much lower than what I had been looking at previously. I had been looking at homes at the tippy-top of our budget. Obviously, in markets like this, you can’t do that and expect to buy a house within budget. So we looked low and expected to pay more. This hurt my heart a little, but we were still able to find some good options in our price range that we liked. But like I said, most of them were gone by the end of the week.
Can I just say how stressful it is to be shopping in a market like this?! Buying a house is obviously a huge investment. At first, I was super excited to look for homes, but once you start looking and getting invested, this panicked feeling sets in: “Is this the best one? Will I find something better? What if this was my only option and I don’t find something else for months? I love this house, what if someone bids more than I can counter?” I also didn't want to go into it thinking, “Well, it’s okay enough. I just have to make it work for five years.” I want to be able to buy a house in good conscience, knowing that I could be happy in it if it were to be my forever home. You see what I mean?
It took about five weeks, one terminated contract, and another rejected offer before we finally went under contract with this house. And honestly, I’m so thankful it worked out this way. Although smaller than the first house we went under contract with, this one has been updated more recently, has less projects, and less problems overall with the structure and integrity of the building. And where we had a laundry list of objections to the first house, we didn’t even have any objections to this inspection which helped the process along immensely. We get to move in November 1st, so stay tuned for some before and after photos as we take this house and make it our home.
If you’re looking for a new home in the Denver area, be sure to check out JC Denver Home Team and tell Jocelyn we sent you!