6 Things To Know Before Buying Your First House

Buying your first house is a huge deal. If you’ve found yourself here because you’re on the verge and ready to dive into home ownership, congrats! It’s a major decision, but one that’s so rewarding and financially practical to boot.

Our latest move to Long Island is our second time buying a house, the first time being several years ago when we lived in Florida. They were two very different experiences, but between them I’ve learned a lot about what to expect (hint: who knows), what can go wrong and what I wish I’d known sooner before buying a house.

1. The down payment is NOT the only cash you’ll need to have on hand

If you’re thinking of buying, you’ve obviously started to consider how much of a down payment you can afford. It’s a fun conversation that one, and by fun I mean agonizing.

The thing that surprised us the first time around, though, was the closing costs—all the additional fees you have to pay to get the sale finalized that are separate from the down payment.

We knew closing costs existed, but we didn’t realize how many little things are included and how quickly they add up. This also varies depending where you’re buying your house; in New York there were far more hoops to jump through to complete our purchase and all of those added to our closing costs.

2. You will get emotionally invested

There’s some funny witchcraft that happens when you walk through a house and decide you could maybe, possibly see yourself living there.

Give it a few hours and you’ve convinced yourself it’s the only house for you. Put in an offer, sleep on it, then start freaking out when you haven’t heard back by the end of the day. Lie awake wondering if you could ever love another house again. All over a property you literally didn’t know existed 48 hours prior. Repeat.

A house is the biggest purchase you’ll ever make. It’s hard not to get attached during the shopping phase! How are you supposed to seriously put in an offer if you don’t love or at least really like the place—but not get so invested that you’ll be devastated if it doesn’t work out? The whole process is pathological.

Maybe by the third time around I’ll have a little more chill, but staying emotionally calm when shopping for a house is a task I haven’t yet mastered.

3. You can and should negotiate to get the best possible deal

If you don’t negotiate on the regular, it can feel really uncomfortable. And if you’re really in love with a property, it can be tempting to make an offer you’re not 100% comfortable with or accept a counter-offer that you believe is still too high just to get the contract signed.

But this isn’t the time to let a little discomfort get in the way of getting the best deal you can. Remember, whatever deal you work out now is the one you’re going to be stuck with for 15 or even 30 years!

It’s completely normal to go through several rounds of negotiations on the price and concessions (extras that are thrown in on either side to sweeten the deal) before a contract is signed. You can even continue to negotiate after the home inspection, depending on the inspection results.

Your realtor should be giving you input on what’s a favorable offer, but ultimately it’s up to you to decide what you’re comfortable with.

4. You shouldn’t lose a house you love over an insignificant amount of money

Negotiating is all well and good, but I’ve also learned that a couple thousand bucks in either direction on the price of a house makes very little difference in the grand scheme of things, and it might not be worth losing a property you love over.

Here’s what I mean. Let’s say your dream house is listed at $100,000 (if only more dream houses at this price tag!). You have $10K to put down up front and you make an offer of $90K. The seller counter-offers at $95K.

While it might be tempting to keep negotiating to try to get a few thousand more off the price, when you do the math on the mortgage, that’s only going to save you about 20 whole bucks on your monthly payment. Sure, it adds up over the life of the loan, but probably not in such a way that’s worth losing the deal over.

Keep this in mind when deciding whether you really want to add another round of negotiations to an already-stressful process.

5. You should shop around for the professionals you plan on working with

Oh, how I wish we would have done this!

Both times we were shopping for a house, we found our realtors off of ads on Trulia. Both times we got really lucky with agents we loved.

But there are several more professionals you’ll have to work with besides your real estate agent—your loan agent, insurance agent, home inspector, attorney (necessary in some states but not in others), and more.

We didn’t do as much due diligence as we should have with all of these, and in some cases ended up working with people who were hard to get a hold of or made the process more challenging than it already was. A little bit of shopping around and we might have wound up with people who were a better fit for us and our situation.

6. The process could happen immediately, or drag on for months

All my type-A pals, get ready to bite your fingernails off. I think the most tortuous part of real estate is the timeline that’s forever changing and might as well not even exist.

In our first home purchase, we made an offer, closed and moved in within three weeks. The second time around it took more than four months. Neither case was out of the ordinary.

In the first case, the sellers were already out of the house, living in another state and ready to sign on the dotted line and get it off their hands. The title to the house was clear and our loan was approved with almost no questions asked.

In the second case, the seller was very much still living in the house and had to make arrangements to pack up and move. There were open permits that had to be resolved with the city before the house could change hands. I was also self-employed this time around, which required an ungodly amount more paperwork for the mortgage company to approve our loan.

Every purchase is different, and there are so many variables that it’s hard to know how long the process will take until you’re in the middle of it. You can at least get some indication by doing the following:

• Find out if the seller is currently living in the property
• Find out if they have concrete move-out plans or will need to make arrangements after accepting an offer
• Find out why they’re selling (for example, a family that’s moving for a job in another city will be more motivated to close quickly than someone who’s selling a vacant house they inherited from an older family member)
• Call your city’s building inspector and ask if there are any open permits on the property (sometimes you can get them to look this up for you if you tell them it’s for a real estate deal)
• Move quickly on the buyer’s action items, like scheduling the home inspection and turning in all of your necessary financial documents right away

I started a YouTube channel to document our home renovation adventures. Check it out here!

I hope this has helped give you a little more perspective into the process ahead. It can be stressful and overwhelming, but once you get those keys in your hand on closing day and have a home to call your very own, it’s all worth it.

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