Hello! Welcome to episode 42 of I’d Rather Stay In. This week, we’re talking all about the process of buying a house, and sharing why we love our homes (and some BIG news about Megan’s family)!

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Episode transcript

Welcome to I’d rather stay in the podcast for cozy introverts. We’re your hosts Stephie Predmore and Megan Myers. This week’s episode buying a house

Hello.

Hello there.

Ah, summer is winding down. And I think that means that the giant dinosaur sized mosquitoes in my backyard may go away soon and I’m very happy about that.

I am not a fan of mosquitoes. I mean, I don’t think anyone is But

no, I’m not a fan. They love me. It’s not a

Yeah, me too.

Not a mutual feeling. They love me. And we were out there for a few minutes before the baby went to bed after it was like not so humid and hot it was still humid, but it wasn’t as hot. And I’m swear to you these mosquitoes with the size of dinosaurs, like pterodactyl sized mosquitoes, I was like, get the fuck away from my baby. So I was not I was not pleased with these enormous mosquitoes But okay, summer is winding down, and soon it’ll be a lovely crisp fall weather. So I’m pretty excited about that.

And they’ll all be dead.

Yeah, all the mosquitoes will die.

I am going to get one of those. I think it’s called a thermacell. I think that’s what it’s called. It’s a mosquito repellent sort of machine technology that’s supposed to work. Multiple friends who have said it works so

Ivegot to get me one of those things.

Yeah, it looks very mosquito repellent and tick control gross. I hate ticks. Yeah. So I don’t go on the woods. So Megan so Megan, what’s new with you?

Uh, well. So, I wanted to Yeah, I was gonna say one thing before we jump into that, but

Well, say your thing

Okay. So a right like as we’re getting ready today is a Tuesday, podcast recording day and usually right before that, like, we’re, we have dinner. Mm hmm. And kind of all running around, getting all the things done for the day and everything and usually, the kids empty the dishwasher after dinnertime. And okay. Basically, at this point in my parenting career, I feel like it’s just a lot of different ways for me to Figure out how to say I told you so without saying.

Okay,

because the kids like to run around and be crazy when they’re doing things in the kitchen, especially if they’re like, they think it’s competition, which it’s not.

But they’re, they’re seven and 12. Like, yeah, everything’s a competition between

Yes, of course. And so, you know, like, mere moments after I had finished telling them to not goof around in the kitchen for a little like 12 hundredth time. One of them got hurt, so

Oh, no, the big one or the little one.

The little one ran like right into the side of the drawer.

There were tears weren’t there.

Yeah. It was like the fifth time he cried today so

because things are going really well.

Yes schools awesome. We already covered that. Yeah.

Listen, listen to a previous episode for more thoughts on quarantine schooling, right.

But this episode, we are talking about the process of buying a house.

And why are we talking about that Megan?

Well, because the day this episode airs I am closing on a new house.

Yes, you are and and, and tell me where where are you buying this house? Megan?

Well, we’ve joked about it before on the podcast. But now our dreams are coming true. And we will be in the same city.

I’m so excited. I am like, seriously, so excited for this. You are buying the cutest house and we’re gonna be like three minutes from each other. Now.

It’s very exciting.

Ah, yes. So okay. aside From all the lovely things that we will get to do now that we are going to be down the street from each other, like just total Sister Wives. Um, can you give a little bit of a recap for our listeners as to why you’re making this move, because obviously you live just outside of Austin. Now, I do not live just outside of Austin. I live in the middle of Illinois. So that’s a pretty big change. So tell us a little bit about why that’s a thing.

So the short answer would be COVID, I guess, be the catalyst for all of the things. But a longer answer is that, to be honest, you know, my husband and I grew up in the Midwest, and even though we’ve lived in Texas for like, 15 years, we kind of have always been like, thinking about moving back to the Midwest. We’ve constantly thought about especially you know, When you go visit your family and they’re like, Oh, we missed them. We like the architecture, like partially it’s the architecture. We’re like, oh, the houses down here are kind of the they’re just kind of all the same and boring and like, the stuff that we like is all you know the old woodwork and writing porches and stall the different character basically. And so off and on throughout the years, we just kind of randomly look at houses, usually in the Minneapolis area, because that’s where the majority of our family lives, and that’s where we went to school. So we’re naturally drawn to that area. But the housing prices there are crazy insane for especially for the kind of house that we would want and the area that we would want to live in. We live in the suburbs now and it’s fine, but also, we would like to live somewhere where you can Walk to places.

Mm hmm.

So recently, I got on some sort of tear about looking at houses again. And partially because we joke around all the time about how like, we should live in the same place and be Sister Wives. Right. Um, I was like, well, let’s see what kind of houses are available in Bloomington.

Right, because you have visited here last year. Yeah. You didn’t just decide to look at houses here without ever having been here. You came here for a few days last year before an event we had in Chicago and so you were able to like see the town and stuff like that.

Yes. I have been there before granted It was only for a few days, but I have been there. I mean, when it’s a small town, you can see most of the towns That’s true. Austin we only visited for like four or five days before we decided to move here. So yeah, it’s kind of the same. Um, and so I had found his house and I thought it was really cute but it was kind of it seemed kind of expensive blahblahblah and then kind of put it out of my head for a little while. And then one night after we were recording the podcast, I still had like the Zillow tab open from that house. And so I just hit refresh to see if there were any new houses listed. And this house popped up. And I was like, oh my god. Look at this house.

Yeah, you were like, look at this house. What Tell me what’s wrong with this house because it was a great price and it looked beaut like the pictures are beautiful as those one of those things were like, is the Is there like a meth lab in the basement? Is there like a witch living in the attic? Like what are we not seeing here? Because yes, it the listing was perfect.

Yeah, it was crazy. But I was immediately I was immediately drawn to it. I showed my husband and he was immediately drawn onto it, which is usually not the case. And so I was like, you need to go look at this house for me Stephie

I did I like made an appointment on Zillow that night for like two days later. Yeah.

So then you looked at the house, and we you do like a little FaceTime with me going through the house. And then that day, I got a hold of realtor. And the next day, she went to the house and she made videos for us of that. She was also like, this house is crazy amazing. And I don’t know, it’s like, it’s a great price. And the only thing is that the neighborhood itself is not necessarily in line with the house. And so that’s why it seems it’s so weird because the house to us is so cheap, because it’s coming from where we live. The houses are crazy expensive, right? But she was like, No, this house is actually overpriced for the area and we’re like what we’re giving you like $3 for the house, right?

So we had a very busy Saturday where we spent a bunch of time on like a zoom call with the realtor. Yeah, going over all the things and then putting in an offer and getting the offer accepted that day and Bob had not actually seen the house in person or Bloomington in person. So we basically bought a house sight unseen and we’re moving into

it was wild.

It’s crazy

so fast. Alex was like, holy shit, they did it. Like, like he I remember he was it was a Saturday so he was at work. And I was like, they put an offer on the house, they’re getting the house or whatever, and he was like, No shit. So yeah, it’s so exciting and you guys came up for the inspection. So you have seen the house now. Obviously, when this airs, you will have seen it again because you will You both closed on the house. But you you have as a recording it you have since been up here and seen the house. It is you can you can verify. For real. There’s no meth lab in the basement, no witch in the attic.

Correct that we in the unless they hide the which really, really well Really? Really?

Yeah. So that’s so exciting. And the process of buying a house so this is your third house that you’ve purchased. Am I correct?

Yes, yes, we’ll be our third that we’ve purchased. The funny the other funny thing is that when we first were thinking about buying it or I guess another we thought about it for longer than like 30 seconds. But when we were first discussing the whole thing, we were like, well, maybe we’ll just keep this house for a while. Until you know that semester is over or Intel likes Spring because spring is the you know, more ideal housing purchase time. So maybe the market will be better blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then we talk to our realtor and he’s like, No, no, no sell now.

We want to sell as soon as possible.

Yeah, I had an offer put in like, the same day you listed your house.

So we had it. We had we had one we think we had a few offers, like right away.

Yeah. Within like 24 hours. Yeah, it was wild.

It was crazy. And so he was right. So yeah, that’s really crazy and exciting. But we’ve so we bought our first house. When I was pregnant with Reese, so 12 years ago. And then this house we actually built which is kind of funny that we’re selling it but we built it in that I was moved in four years ago. Mm hmm. So now we’re in a third house.

You’re in your third house. We are on our first house. We bought our house right after we got married. So we’ve been here going on five years. And after we went through the home buying process, and we moved in, I looked at Alex and I said, Well, we’re dying in this house. And it’s really funny to me because my parents move. I they they moved multiple times, like several times in the first, probably 10 years of their marriage. Because they started out. My dad was stationed in the army down in North Carolina, and so they had a house down there and then they moved back to Indiana and they had a few houses. They lived in a few different places within my first few years of life. And then we moved to Illinois when I was 12. So they they had probably lived in like four or five different places, and they owned most of those. And those that would have been like within, you know, the first 12, 13 years of their marriage. And I’m like, when we bought our house, I was like, how did you do that? This is such a pain in the ass. I damn. So I always admire people. Like I genuine. And we have some friends from that Alex grew up with and they got married. They’ve been married probably 10 years at this point. Let’s just say they’ve been married 10 years. It’s maybe a little less than that. But they have owned, I think four homes in the time that I’ve known them and I’ve known them for like seven years. And I’m like, always an off Have people that just undertake this process because not only is buying insane and selling insane, but then you have to move on your shit.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like moving is actually probably the worst part.

Oh, I legitimately thought when we moved from our one bedroom apartment and so it was a one like 600 maybe 700 square foot one bedroom apartment that we had and we moved down here. I legitimately thought we might get divorced. That’s the only time in our marriage, we’ve gone through some shit. And that was the only time in our marriage I thought oh, man, this this might end right here right now. Like moving is the worst.

So do you see that home buying is like one of the absolute top stressors in your life.

So I believe that I believe that because there’s so I also feel like for introverts, like, putting in an offer on a house is like one of the worst things that you can do. Because I don’t feel like I feel like I’ll speak for myself. I feel like my introversion makes me not a good negotiator in like, I can negotiate on other people’s behalf. I am not good at negotiating on my own behalf. Like I’m like, Can you just tell me what price to pay and I’ll just pay for the thing. Like, what, how? I’ll just I’ll just pay the money for the thing like what’s the price tag? Okay, that’s fine. So, like putting in the offer on our house, you know, like, Okay, well, like what do you want to offer? Like, I don’t know, just tell me what to pay. I don’t know. Just tell me.

Like, well, I mean, I don’t think I don’t think that’s you know, limited to introverts when it comes to buying a house because it is a lot of money. It’s you know, it’s very purchased. Most people ever bank. Yeah. But that’s why you hire a realtor because stray tell you how much to offer. Sure,

and my biggest thing, so if I had to go back, I would still buy our house but our our realtor was the selling realtor on our house.

Oh, yeah, that’s not a good idea.

It was bad. And I like she showed us the house and, you know, we fell in love with it. But like, at that point, we should have figured out something else like realtor wise because it was she was not advocating on our, but like she was very clearly sort of on their side. Like she had known them for a long time, I think and she there are some things where I’m like, you’re not being a very like neutral party here. So it was not a good experience.

Yeah, because the thing is, is that a realtor is paid By the person who’s selling the house. Mm hmm. Yeah. So even if it’s your realtor that you’re the even if you’re the buyer or realtor, like you get, you know, half of whatever the seller realtor is getting, right. So like, we paste it, we’re paying 6%. And then they split that down the middle between the two realtors. And there’s so there’s no reason for a seller’s realtor to like work for a person.

Even though like if, in theory, they are supposed to be a neutral party if they’re representing both. That’s not and no, and yeah, it was that that was it was a bad experience. So that would be like, That’s like my biggest advice is like, don’t have the same realtor as the sellers because it’s bad.

Yeah, so a good realtor would be able to at least, they’ll be able to look around if they do they would do comps in the area and Hmm, and you know, evaluate the neighborhood and things like that and be able to tell you whether the house was overpriced or just right or if they think that you should put in a higher bid than listing price. There’s lots of different things that go into it. But that’s the best thing is that you don’t have to do that yourself. Because a lot of time you’re just like, I don’t know. Right. And it’s like a nice house.

Right. I just love this house take all the monies. Yeah, it’s not your job to know. This is why we hire the people. There’s, they’re absolutely times in life where it is worth the money to hire a person to do a service for you. And this is one of those times.

Yes. The other thing is that a realtor will also make sure that you are protected, because there are contracts and many, many, many forms. That you put your name on your machine, you have the legal backup

and if you have so we have an FHA loan, so there’s extra paperwork. So let’s talk through. Let’s go through mortgage types real quick. Okay. So an FHA loan, you got your FHA and your VA loans, which are special loans. For those either with lower incomes or first time homebuyers. FHA is also like sometimes known as like the first time homebuyer loan or whatever, or VA loans are for veterans get and they’re guaranteed by federal programs. So with an FHA loan, you are able to put down a smaller amount of money because, and a lot of times why it’s considered like your first time homebuyer loan is that if you’re selling a home in theory, whatever you are making on split, you’re selling your home for you can then use as your downpayment on the next house. But obviously, because most people don’t have normal people do not have just 10s of thousands of dollars sitting around to put down on a house, especially if it’s your first time buying a house.

So it allows you to put down a smaller amount of money as your down payment, and then they lump everything together with your mortgage payment in escrow. So, when I pay our mortgage payment, I’m actually also paying for our insurance, our homeowners insurance and our property taxes. Instead of paying those separately, which actually I kind of love because I pay them out every month and I already have it budgeted for instead of getting like your property tax bill once a year and then going Oh shit, do I have this much money. Did I squirrel it away? Did I spend it? Oh, no, like, it’s already being taken care of. So I actually kind of love that about the FHA, just like on a personal note. So that’s what we have. And then there’s a conventional loan. So Megan talking about that.

Yeah, we have conventional. I’m pretty sure. I don’t go we’re definitely not first time homebuyers. So there’s no reason we will qualify for an FHA. Um, so it’s just a basic loan. It’s not, there’s no special things that get attached with it. It’s something that when you get mortgages, there’s lots of different ones out there aside from the ones we just said, but these ones have a fixed rate. So you can pay you’re gonna basically pay the same amount through the whole lifespan of the mortgage. We also have our escrow and interest rolled into our payment so it’s kind of the same It’s all one thing because that is so much easier.

It’s so much better like 10 out of 10 would recommend

Yes, I know people who have their escrow tax payment separate. And I’m like, why would you do that? It’s just a lot easier to get in bundled. I think a lot of banks actually prefer it that way too, because they, they think they’d benefit a little bit more from it. Yeah. conventional mortgage mortgages generally come as 30 years. Some people opt for 15 years, they want to pay it off a little bit faster. But they also you can get a 40 year you can get a 20 year you need a 10 years depends on how fast you want to pay off your mortgage.

And if you get for example, if you get a 30 year mortgage, and at some point you refinance, you may be able to refinance for a 15 year because that’s when my parents built the house that like I mostly grew up in um, they started With a 30 year mortgage, and then they refinanced a few years down the road down to a 15 year, and they were able to pay it off. right about that time. So you’re not necessarily locked into the 30 years also, like you can pay your house off sooner.

Yeah, you can always pay more. Yeah. Usually refinancing helps you out with the fees that are associated, like the interest and all that. So you pay less interest over the course of the loan amount, which is always a benefit.

Yeah, we, so we got we worked with a mortgage broker. And so that she basically did the shopping around the banks for us, instead of us having to call around a bunch of banks and be like, Hello, would you approve me? How what would your rate be? Um, and then she like has our information on file and so we I don’t even know that we had been here a year and she called me up and she’s like, hey, you’re like information just like picked up for me. You can refinance for like this lower interest rate she would save this much like blah blah blah. So we actually refinanced pretty soon after we purchased the house because she was she was able to find a lower rate for us. So I was like, thank you for doing the work for me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, it was great. So then what’s the big No, no when it comes to mortgages, Megan

Well, there’s actually other a couple others that are like even crazier ones, but there’s this thing called the adjustable rate mortgage, which I think is a super big bad thing.

Literally has written in our podcast show notes. adjustable rate mortgage boo hiss no in all caps.

So I so probably should have said this at the top of the hour, but we are not Like finance experts or bankers or mortgage lender experts or any of that bio, we’ve just done this out of from a home buying and or selling perspective, but right and in a weird person who really likes to listen to marketplace, um

bless your heart.

I believe adjustable rate mortgages were actually part of what caused the gigantic housing crisis back in 2008. Because the thing with adjustable rate mortgages is that the interest rate changes over time. And so the first few years of the mortgage, your interest rate stays the same and then after the time period expires, it can change to whatever basically be in is supposed to follow the economy and follow the trends of whatever whoever is deciding the rates. However, the problem was that back when all this Housing stuff was happening beforehand. There’s all this, you know, a lot of booming with city growth and lots of new houses being built. And mortgage lenders were giving mortgages to many, many people who couldn’t actually afford them right? And Laureen and a bunch of people with these adjustable rate mortgages being like we’ll see it’s so affordable and not really explaining that like in five years, hey, guess what rate will probably go up and the rates gonna skyrocket and you’re not gonna be able to afford your house anymore, right. So try to avoid them. I don’t know how many mortgage how many banks still offer them Yeah, because there’s really nothing wrong with a conventional rate mortgage rate. And obviously you qualify for an FHA or VA you should get one of those. Yeah.

And also like when you when you have a fixed rate, like when you buy your house, they say, if you only made dear like minimum payments You never refinance over the next 30 years. This is how much you will have paid on your house, like with all the interest accrued, and you can see like, oh, there’s that number. Mm hmm. And sometimes that number is like, Okay, I’m gonna try to pay that off sooner, also. So one thing I will say about an FHA loan is that because it there’s more like federal stuff that goes into it again, look at how professional I am knowing all the terms federal stuff, Megan. There are some restrictions on the FHA loans. So for example, when you have your your inspection for the house that you’re buying, there may be things that come up that the sellers have to fix in order for the FHA loan, an order basically for them to approve The loan is approved for you to purchase the house.

So if it’s if the house isn’t in great condition, they may not approve for you to buy it. And or the sellers may because it’ll say like when you make the offer, like they have an FHA loan or they have a conventional loan, and if there’s an FHA loan, the sellers could decide to decline the offer on the house because they don’t want to deal with all the extra like hoops they may have to jump through to get the house to the standards for the FHA loan, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I was gonna mention that as well, because there’s a lot of other things that go into, you know, putting in an offer on the house. And so you definitely if you are the person selling the house, you you don’t know who these people are that are looking at your house, but you want to accept the best offer and so If you’re really, you know, good at two competing offers or offers, and one of them has an FHA, it might not be in your best interest to accept that one. Yeah, unfortunately, like not great for the people that are trying to become first time homebuyers. But depending on your situation, it might just not work out for you.

I know that I mentioned VA loans. I think they tend to be pretty similar to FHA loans. I know my parents had a VA loan for maybe their first couple of houses, because my dad was in the military at the time. So I think there’s a lot of like, kind of similar things with those two, but I can’t tell you for sure, because it’s been a long time since my mother was like, here’s all the types of loans you can have your house and I only retained the stuff that really pertained to me. Right.

The good thing is that they are both backed by government programs so that in the event that something happens, you can’t pay your house like you’re you’re more protected than somebody with a conventional loan.

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

So why don’t we talk about all these fees?

Man, there’s so many fees,

so many fees and I listed a bunch and I think there’s probably even more. Mm hmm. Yeah.

So, I mean everybody thinks of here’s the cost to buy the house and what are you going to put as your downpayment? So how much are you typically putting in for a down payment

again, so they recommend that you should put down at least 20% which is, can be depending on the price of your house, a lot of money. So Frankly, I don’t know how many people actually put down 20%. Right. Because that’s a lot and it’s not necessarily a big deal. If you don’t put down 20% You do have to put that on your offer. When you’re trying to buy the house just it’s it’s a way to prove that you have money to buy a house basically. And that you can pay for it moving forward. But if you buy a house without Getting to that 20% range then the only thing that happens is that it triggers private mortgage insurance which is just a an extra payment each month that you have to make which is usually pretty small like 50 bucks a month or something even less maybe until you have paid your mortgage down to that you know 80% range. Yeah.

And again, because 20% is a huge chunk of money that that is why there are things like the FHA VA loans them that do not require you to put as much down I want to say like I want to say there’s like a 6% number or something with those but maybe that’s just what we put down I can’t fucking Remember to be completely honest with you. I should have looked it up talking but it’s a much lower number that’s like recommended on those like first time homebuyer loans and things like that. Yeah. Because again, like Again, of course, it depends on the house that you’re looking at and what amount of money you’ve been pre approved for. But yeah, like, even 10% can be a huge amount of money. So it’s just it’s, it’s a lot.

Yeah, it is a lot. Since you mentioned I just want to touch really briefly on the pre approval.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

As we didn’t cover that before, but I just wanted to pop in and say that it’s really important if you are looking to buy a house to get that pre approval. Yes, because a lot of places won’t even like look at an offer if you don’t have a pre approval letter. Yes. So if you are serious about buying house like just go ahead and get that paperwork done. It also makes it a lot easier later on when you are actually getting the loan.

Yeah. And they’ll say like, what are you kind of thinking? And so like when we talked when I when we talked to the mortgage broker we she was like, you know, what are you kind of thinking and like I told her kind of the price range range that we were looking at. And she ran it. We were pre approved for that amount. And then when we decided to put it on the offer on our house specifically, I called her back and then she reran it real quickly to get us approved for like that specific amount. So because it was a teeny bit over what we were thinking originally, so she just rerun it to make sure that before we put in the offer, we had that like, yep, we’re good to go. Everything. Everything is dandy.

Yeah. Cuz you’re probably going to need, you know, to put that letter in, in the email or whatever. Everything’s about email now. So with the offer, so, yes.

So going back to these other fees, So there is a title fee title fee and insurance. The title is, you know, the actual like piece of paper for your house, which is kind of silly, but it’s like when you buy a car, you get a title. So you pay taxes on that and you have to pay for this as well. But that’s usually paid for by the seller. Luckily, yeah, there’s a few things that are paid for by the seller x. Yeah, so there is the title fee and assurance, there’s fees to the realtor we talked about that earlier is usually paid for by the seller. And then there the the two parties split that between each other, and then also a home warranty. Usually they offer a home warranty for up to a year just in case anything crazy happens.

And those are those are all paid for by the seller. Mm hmm. Yeah. And you usually say like, there’s like standards like, you know, typically asked for XML Home Warranty or whatever. And so when you go in the offer, you know, your realtor will say, okay, like, here’s their Standard, do you want to ask for more?

Or like, do you want to be a dick and ask for what it is go for the stature?

Yeah, it’s usually just a bunch of boxes to check. And then they fill the appropriate amount. Like we when we went through all of this to buy the new house. And when they were asking about the home warranty, they’re like, here’s a bunch of Home Warranty options. And we’re like, whatever. Like, they look all the same. We have no that I don’t know, this looks fine.

Because at that point, you’re overwhelmed anyway.

Well, they really did also all look the same. And they’re all named very similar things and you’re just like, I don’t care. Just the first one that looked good. I like this name the best schreyer

Yeah, yeah. So then you got your property taxes, which are going to be dependent upon where you live. Some property taxes are outrageous, and some property taxes are basically nothing But that’s going to be there’s just no no real from what I could tell real rhyme or reason to a lot of things.

There’s not a real rhyme or reason to a lot of things. Megan, that statement just applies across the board.

It really does but yeah, I mean my property taxes here are insane so it’s it’s there’s so many benefits to moving to Bloomington.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, cuz when you’re talking about like, I think it’s important when you when you hear about like, oh, there’s a lower cost of living. There’s a lot of things that go into like oh, lower cost of living like okay, yes, just literally like how much do all like things cost, but then like, if you’re gonna buy a home, it’s not just about how much does the building cost but how much does the land the building is on cost, right?

When it comes to buying a house to the property taxes, generally So, you know, you put in your escrow every month, but if you sell your house, you get that back. And then the person buying the house has to put in however much when they buy it to basically, you know, cover the year, whatever.

So that’s just another extra, you know, depending on where, like we said, depending on where you live like that could be $10,000. So it’s not a small amount.

It’s not a small amount. And that’s why Megan and I both recommend, like if you can have it lumped into your monthly like mortgage payment because I mean, generally like even though ours, you know, is paid out through our mortgage through our escrow and stuff like that. We still get in the mail once a year, the you know, property tax bill. Mm hmm. I don’t have to do anything with it, but I get it and Every time I get it I open it and my stomach drops to my knees because oh my god and then I like say a prayer of thanks that I have everything rolled in and I’ve paid it all monthly and I don’t have to find x amount of money right I ended my because I mean I do I feel like stuff like that it’s easy to forget like, Oh, I meal property taxes are gonna be due soon. I have to save x thousands of dollars to pay that unless you’re just like really vigilant about that stuff. So roll it in, people just roll it in.

That’s right.

So then, when you are going through the process of buying a home or if you’re the seller 87,000 people have to come look at the house. And they have to do that for a couple of reasons. So you have the appraisal, which is good. To make sure that the house appraises at the asking price,

at least, at least at the asking price,

at least at the asking price. Yes, you can also. So there’s other thing that, you know, in our case, we listed our house and then we got an offer that is higher than the list price. And so what they have the the buyer do is fill out an appraisal waiver, basically, that says, You know, I know that the house is listed for this price. And I know that I’m offering this price, and I will pay this price as long as the appraisal is for at least what you listed it for. So that way they’re covered. But then also, they’re covered for how much they’re offering essentially. And then, if your house appraises for less, they have the right to walk away. Yeah, or you can work out Some sort of deal because essentially what’s going to happen is that, say your house appraised if you list your house at 250. And it appraises for 225 the buyer could walk away but the problem is that the next person who’s going to be interested in your house, that’s gonna still be a problem. Right? So you’re gonna have to reduce the list price anyway. So you might as well just try to work out a deal with the first buyer right?

Exactly. Instead of having to go through go through it all again. That’s terrible. This is terrible. So then once it’s appraised, and you know says okay, yes, it’s good it appraised for at least what they were asking for at least the list price then you get the inspections and right yes, there are multiple of them.

Because life is so much fun.

So in Texas, you just have one inspection

okay.

They do everything or

well, so they do. I guess they do. I mean, mainly the thing is, so we don’t have basements. So there’s less to worry about with that. Everything’s built on a slab. So that makes a difference there. But then they would generally, I guess, make recommendations toward if they think you need a more in depth inspection, like an HVAC or termites or anything like that.

So when we bought our house in Bloomington, they were like, yeah, you need like five inspections.

And well, yeah, and I think if I’m remembering correctly, and again, this was like five years ago, but if I’m remembering correctly, if you buy an old ass house, there’s more stuff because in addition to the normal stuff, they also have to run like they either have to run the lead inspection or Do you have to like sign the waiver that no like I yeah, I’m good. My kids aren’t gonna lick the walls. And then the radon like there’s there’s multiple there’s more stuff if your house has been built prior to a certain date. Yeah, or the house that you’re looking to purchase has been built prior to a certain date that you don’t necessarily have to have on a house. That’s like a new build, for example.

Right. So we had to have the standard inspection. And then we we signed off on the lead inspection because my kids are past the point of eating paint. It was kind of assumed like this is a really old house, it’s probably has led paint somewhere. Yes, and we’re just gonna accept that it’s fine. And then we also got a termite inspection because it’s a mostly wood house and we got a sewer line inspection and and we got a radon inspection and

The radon extension inspection was the one that kind of threw us because I had never heard of it before because we don’t have basements. Yes and so radon sounds really scary. But it’s really not that scary. It’s it’s a gas that is underground basically. And if you have basements it can you know, get into your basement So basically, you just need to have your basement tested to make sure that it is properly filtering out basically you don’t have excess radon

and they put like a little gauge thingamajigger on and

yeah, and if you do, it’s not even like a huge huge deal. You just get a special thing installed in your basement and it takes care of it. Yeah. Yeah, that was another cost. Yeah, it is. It’s just like an extra an extra thing. So there’s there’s definitely and and if you and ever end up refinancing, like, some of these things, like you’d have to redo the appraisal, for example, if you ever ended up refinancing your home, so just because you do this once doesn’t mean that you won’t ever have to do it again until you sell your house. It depends on like, if you’re going to refinance and stuff like that.

Yeah. And you could you might want to refinance to like, if you’ve been paying down your house and the values have been going up. If you think you’re getting close to like that 80% Mark, and you’re like, Oh, I want to get rid of that ridiculous 200 or, you know, $200 a year payment to the party mortgage insurance. Um, you would have to get it inspected or not inspected but appraised again, yeah.

Yeah, for sure. Um, so, then you get into just like, legal crap. This this is a section I consider boring legal crap, that’s like really important. I guess

it’s really dry and important.

loan origination fee.

Yeah, so that’s basically you’re just paying the bank. Yeah, for all the work that they’ve done because it takes like 30 days or whatever for them to do all their paperwork. I don’t know if it really takes that long to be honest. But it takes 30 days

30 days for them to like walk it from one office to the other. Oh, wait, it’s all electronic. Right?

Yeah, I’m not sure why it takes I guess because they they run your credit scores and they check your bank accounts and there’s various things that they have to do so they get paid for that.

Yeah, and your credit score gets run like 8700 times so when you’re buying a house, but it doesn’t like they run it in a way that doesn’t fuck you up just

right. Yeah. You’re not gonna get dinged there probably be like yesterday, you tried to buy a house also rose up.

So when we purchased our house, I am actually the one on the loan because they ran both. So they ran our credit scores. And at the time, Alex still had some students loans out under his name. And so his we wouldn’t have gotten as good of a rate if we had calculated him in and so the loan is actually just out under me. So that’s that is like a that’s like a thing. That’s if if your spouse or your partner has like not great credit, you may not want to consider them in the loan. He still owns the house with me, although actually, did I ever add them to the title? That’s a really good question. I haven’t had I usually find that out. I should find that out. It was one of those things that was supposed to happen when we closed and then our sucky realtor, like didn’t make it happen. And

I feel like that would have happened when you refinance, though.

Maybe, maybe not. It’s really impossible to say I should probably look into that but The point is, even if both of you are not on the loan, you can both still be on the title of the house. So it is an option.

That’s actually how ours is as well. Um, and it’s not because of my credit, like I have excellent credit, but it’s because for the record for the record, I have very excellent credits. It’s because I was a freelancer for so long and so my, like, technical professional job history. Yeah. Isn’t doesn’t go back as far. Yeah. And so especially when we bought this house, I was freelancing at the time and then went for the new house my like, technical job history, and my current job. Just barely. is short of two year. Yeah. Even though I’ve actually been working at it for a long time. But so it’s just extra paperwork and we decided to skip

if you’re self employed. There’s going to be a lot of extra paperwork. Yeah, I have no dealt with this because I have always because I had a regular employer even though I do some work on the side. Some freelance work on the side like I have my full time job is like normal. I’m not employed by my own self. But like one of our friends, they just refinanced their house and she had to go through so much because she runs her own business. She’s a blogger runs her own business, and it was like apparently just paperwork. Hell

yeah, it’s not impossible. It’s just a lot more extra proof that you have a stable income basically, because, you know, the reason why they want to give you a loan is so they benefit and if you can’t pay your loan, then that’s no better. Yeah, so you’re just proving that you can pay it. Yeah. Yeah.

So that’s just something like yeah, like Megan said, it’s not that you can’t buy a house or you won’t be approved for a loan. It’s just be like, be prepared. They’re going to ask for a lot of paperwork. So, another good reason to like have an accountant that you’re hiring and like, do like, keep your bookkeeping like up to up to snuff. Yeah.

So then the final fee that we have listed here, there’s, there’s so many more that could pop up in there, depending on what you’re doing with your loan and your house and all the things as an attorney. Mm hmm. Always good to get an attorney.

I mean, that’s, that’s true for a lot of things in life,

especially now. So when we, when we first put in our offer for the new house, we thought we might be doing power of attorney for sale for the signing because of COVID. And we’re buying a house long distance and so we just thought it was a good idea to have one just in case. It’s just extra protection. They can also look at the contracts along with a realtor and then just kind of cover your butt. It’s not expensive.

You’re not paying them like a crazy rate or anything. They usually have some sort of deal for like home buyers so you’re not like on a retainer or anything like that.

Right? I gotta be honest, I don’t think that we had an attorney when we bought our house Yeah, I don’t think I don’t think that we did.

I do think it was most it’s mainly because because of COVID just for extra protection knock since we can’t, since we didn’t get to see the house in person before we bought it. Yeah. And we’re doing all this paperwork long distance

also at the time, and this is gonna sound really like, I don’t know, whatever. But at the time, like my parents were like they were our parents really helped us with buying this house. Not like paying for it. But in terms of like, we looked at the house and then we actually had I think my parents I can’t remember if Alex’s parents came to us. came and also looked at the house before we put in an offer on it. Because again, like I said, my parents have bought, like, in their 30 years of marriage, my parents purchased like seven or eight homes. So, like, at that point, I was like, I feel like you guys gotta know what you’re doing. So I’ve seen a lot of shit. So like, Can you take a look? So we felt a little safer, like waving, like some of that extra stuff just because like, we had extra people who we knew were being really vigilant, like looking at it and be like, oh, or like, yes, legit. I was doing it now without my mom to help me know. I’m a 31 year old woman and I’m like,

Well, I think it’s a good idea for anyone actually, who is buying a house for the first time to have somebody help them, um, who has been through it before. Even you know, just having a realtor is really important, but Somebody who knows you and yes, but also knows things about buying a house I think is helpful. Yeah. One of my friends bought a house last year and I went with her to go look at some showings, and I hope she thought it was helpful.

But there’s certain things that you can look for because you just like have been in it before. Yeah, like, Oh, you need to like watch out for that thing might not have noticed kind of stuff.

Yeah, it’s like one of those is one of those skills. Like once you do it, like if you have a secret skill, I feel like planning a wedding is the same. Mm hmm. So even though like hopefully, you just plan the one wedding yourself. You don’t ever have to do it again. Whereas buying a house you may actually do again, but yeah, I feel like you do it and then all of a sudden you have all this knowledge, all the skills. Like I can share, I can share my knowledge.

So okay, that’s a lot of stuff. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. There’s a lot of paperwork again like I remember like going into closing and signing so much paperwork just like page after page like sign here sign here do the things that like My hand hurts by the first

like the first page like lazy writing your name and then you get the last page and it’s like a line because he just can’t anymore.

I know it’s funny because like my signature is like that all the time anyway. And Alex like he actually writes all the letters in his name and he was taking so long I was like, flying through it because my signature is so hot so scrawl anyway, so like, okay, dude, like maybe don’t bother with letters anymore. Just a line. It’s fine. put an X is fine.

Yeah, so with all of that, why buy a house But why even do it? Megan?

Um, because that’s really great answer. Um, I mean, it’s an investment. It’s a good thing to have, I think. Long term. Yes. It’s not for everyone I know people who have owned houses and decided, you know, actually, this sucks. And I give up.

Like my give up, but you know what I mean?

Right? Well, you know, like, when you’re buying a house, you go from, like, so let’s say you are renting before. Okay? So you’re making a monthly payment and you’re not investing that money in your own property. But also you have somebody that has to take care of shit if it goes sideways. If your dishwasher breaks, there’s somebody that comes and takes care of it. There’s, you know, depending on what you Your deal is with your landlord. They may be taking care of your lawn care if you have a yard.

Like all the general like upkeep if the house needs to be painted like that’s the kind of stuff that a landlord is taking care of that now, guess who gets to take care of that when you own your own home? You do.

We’re supposed to be making a case for buying a house though.

Oh, yes. I’m sorry, not supposed to scare people away but also. But also when you’re doing that stuff, like we just had our house, the outside of our house repainted and it was a project like we hired somebody to do it. And it wasn’t a cheap project but also like, so there’s there’s the practical thing of We made an investment in our home and we did that like our home is an investment in our future. But then what We do things like that when we even do just like little cosmetic things around the house that it’s making, it’s making an investment in our home is adding resale value to our home. It’s keeping it in good shape so that if and when down the line we choose to sell, we can get the most out of our house.

And but then there’s also this like, pride of like, our house looks really good. We just repainted it and like all of our neighbors are like, Oh my gosh, it looks so beautiful. Like I the painter, I’m friends with the the painter and his wife. And they posted like the before and after on their Facebook and I like reshared it to my timeline or whatever to recommend them and I got so many comments on And that posts like, people were like, Oh my God, your house is beautiful. And I was like, hey, that’s mine. I own that.

So I don’t know there’s there’s the like very practical, like, if you’re making a monthly payment, do you want to make a monthly payment to somebody else? Does that benefit someone else? Or do you want to make a monthly payment that benefits yourself? But then there’s also some real there’s can be some real pride in owning your own home.

Yeah, and I think like, you know, your house grows, it degrades it, no matter where you live, it’s kind of an extension of yourself. But if you own a house, you can really like do that, you know, permanently. You know, you can paint it where you want, you can add whatever you want. You could change it you could, you know, you can ruin it if you want doesn’t matter like exactly, it’s, it’s yours. It’s yours to do what you want to do with and also I feel for me, I feel it’s kind of like a not necessarily in nostalgic thing, but just the fact that like, it’s something that you can have forever. Like,

you don’t have to have, you know, you’re gonna have that all those memories that you make with your family in your house and then you know, yeah, if you have kids, then they’ll bring their kids and it’s a whole thing. But also you don’t have that worry about is the landlord gonna raise my rent, right? Am I gonna get kicked out is you know, am I do I am? Am I gonna have crazy people who live above me and that’s gonna make me want to move out? There’s so many downsides of renting. I think about I’m just like, I could never go back to renting and probably right.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah. I yeah, we love own. I mean, there’s, you know, gotta remember to mow the grass and fight with your husband about that. But there it’s really you can make up Make it whatever you want. And when we bought our house, like we very much envisioned this as having the potential to be our forever home.

You know, even though and not everyone does that, even, especially with their first home. You know, a lot of times people will buy like a starter home and knowing that once they have a couple of kids, they’ll get something bigger or whatever. But we were, you know, we had the ability to like, we looked at this house, and we’re like, we could envision you bringing our baby’s home to this house and our kids learning to walk in this house and being you know, them being teenagers and bringing their friends over like these were all things I could envision. And like so clearly when I visited this house for the first time, like saw this house for the first time, and like that’s one of the reasons One of the things That made us fall in love with it and so you know it is hope you know hopefully going to be a place where you know we’ve even even if like we were to up and decide to sell tomorrow like, this is the house we brought our baby home to so it will no matter what always have like that special. That special memory for us.

Yeah, that’s what I love about so the the house that we first bought our first house is the house that we brought our babies home to. And we knew that we wouldn’t we always knew that we wouldn’t stay there forever. So it was it wasn’t as sad as it could have been. We were leaving. Yeah, but as it turns out, a friend of mine actually bought it from the people who bought it from us like last year. When she like in the fall, I think I remember when it was but she bought our house and I was like oh my god. So now I know someone who is living in my house my old house and she shares all of her pictures when she’s like decorating and like how proud she is what’s our first house? And it’s so sweet and adorable and I love it so much I love it makes me so happy I love yeah sir

like you have also like this is probably gonna sound really woowoo but I think like, I feel like also the house sort of soaks up the love that’s in it to an extent like you know, you put so much love into that house and now her family is putting so much love into that house like to be able to see that like carrying on I think is really special.

Yeah, and yeah, like it I hope that happens with this house too.

Yeah. Because I mean this the house you’re buying like there’s so much history to it and they’re ours is the same. Ours is like almost 100 years old and like, I was somebody I know on Facebook had posted like they live in an older house. And she was saying, like, you know, sometimes when I’m up in the middle of the night like rocking my baby, she’s like, I think about all of the generations of mothers that lived in this house before me that were up in the middle of the night rocking their baby back to sleep. Oh, and I was like, Oh my goodness. I’m not okay. I’m like, I got you know, like, okay, 90 years like, yeah, there were other mothers, you know, pacing with their baby that wouldn’t sleep for you know, snuggling up on the couch with their with their husband after a long day and you know, spending time with their with their loved ones. And even though Yes, a house is a building I think that we can, we can turn it into real home.

Yeah, so I that’s, that’s why our house is special to us. And we’ve we bring our you know, well pre COVID but, you know, we love having people over and like sharing that we you know, we feed people we love Thanksgiving at our house, we love having people around our dining room table and just, you know, sharing food and laughter with them and that’s, that’s something that our house like, contains and I think it sort of soaks it up and I hope that other people have really good memories in our house. You know, when they come over here and our dining room and our kitchen and all of that. So, you know, that’s, that’s the case for buying a house go through all the stupid paperwork because it is worth it. Because there is like I remember walking through our house. The first After we got the keys, and just like it was empty. My parents were like getting ready to bring over a couple of things. But like it was just Alex and I. And I was like, Oh my gosh, and our like our first time like sleeping at our house, like, we have space available. We were like on an air mattress, but there was just a force.

That’s how you have to do the first night

the first night or like on an air mattress. There’s no other furniture in the house, like eating pizza or whatever, like at a folding table. But there you just have this moment of like, there are so many memories ahead of us in this house. Yeah. So so she is it’s a really good feeling and buying a house is it’s a big deal. It’s a big deal. A big deal. I’ve worked hard. Like if you get to the point where you decide that that’s The step you’re gonna take, like, you should feel really proud of yourself that you, you know, saved up the money that you worked, you know, got yourself the whatever job that’s, you know, allowing you to save up that money that you went through all of the work to find the realtor and go through like all of that you should feel really proud of yourself for so

100% and, you know, as soon as all these restrictions are like are lifted, I’m going to be right there at the friggin Historical Society like looking through all the microfilm to like find out all the history in my house because I’m that weirdo I’m like gotta find out who all these families were who lived in my house. Right I know bring them back home. It’s so it’s so cool.

Yeah are one of our neighbors like knows a whole lot more history on our house. To be to like, gave Scoop on it. It was really, it was really interesting. So, so yeah.

What’s bringing us joy

So Megan, you know, you are buying a house. So obviously that is a pretty joyful thing. You’ve got a lot of stuff to look forward to. But is there something else that’s bringing you joy?

Well, I’m just gonna go with a really tiny thing that made me happy today. You know how we like our sparkling waters? Yes. And I got an

I very specifically only like spindrift.

That’s true. I got a new flavor the other day and is not as good as spindrift. I will say that okay, because there’s not actually juice in it. But there ginger peach flavor of target’s sparkling water is pretty good. I wish it was a little bit more gingery to be honest, but it wasn’t bad. I it’s very drinkable and drink it pretty quickly.

It has a sparkling water like, you’re kind of like I’m good. Yummy. And it’s like Lacroix is usually like that for me where I’m like, um, it’s okay.

Yeah, I’m like there it was wave to cross the essence of.

But this is pretty good and to its benefit it is much cheaper than spindrift. So yeah, there’s that.

Yeah, I ration my spindrift cuz I just I

love it so much. I don’t even drink it every day like every other day maybe so like, the spindrift that Ade got me I’m still drinking that because I’m

very careful with my sparkling water.

That’s so funny.

What is bringing you joy.

So I found this shop. I actually found it on Instagram. The other day, so anyone that knows me or follow On Instagram knows that I love to put the baby and some head wraps and some headbands. Baby in a big bow is fantastic. And it’s funny because like I feel like that sort of become like her thing like people are like her thing and my thing and like I get headbands for her like people like well, if they buy her an outfit they almost always include a headband.

Whether it came with outfit or not the legal buy a matching headband. So she has tons of headbands. I have to I there’s a lot but I also wear them a lot because I wear my hair up all the time. So I have a six month old, so but I found this new new to me shop is called the Instagram is shop Marlo Bea and it’s the shop to shop name is Marlo bea b-e-a and it’s owned by This Mama, and she hand makes these beautiful like hair wraps for babies and big kids and mamas. And they’re gorgeous. These fabrics are just awesome. So she is a she is black. And she there’s a lot of very like Afro centric prints that she has. But then there’s just some beautiful like florals and some other beautiful patterns. And I’m obsessed. I bought like three things the night that I found her. So I’m super excited to get those and it’s like the kind that you can like do bows you can do like knots or like you can tie it however you want. It’s not like a headband. It’s actually a wrap. So I’m super excited to put the baby and like a big ass bow like so excited. And of course I got her and I a matching set because I act extra as the so I’m sure at some point soon she’s gonna reach the age where she like rips them off her head but I am writing this train until it pulls out of the station like I am. I am here until she’s like no more.

God, I mean, you started pretty early, so

I’ve been pretty consistent with it. So like we don’t she doesn’t wear them every day. But I’m pretty consistent. Um, it’s not like she only wears them like every three months or something. So I’m hoping maybe she’ll be like used to them and be like, Hey, I love my pretty headbands. It’s fine if she doesn’t, but, you know, we can hope that she’ll make pretty bows. So you know, that’s what’s bringing me joy that

Pretty awesome. Yeah.

I lost my notes

there they are

Next week’s episode

Well, next week is our anniversary episode.

Can you believe it’s been a year?

I cannot believe it.

So, we’re gonna celebrate that. We’re gonna celebrate that next week we’re gonna celebrate having done this podcasting for an entire year. So until then, leave us a review on Apple podcasts and listen to us on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media at irsipodcast or send us an email at idratherstayinpodcast@gmail.com we love to hear from our listeners. Bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai