Part 1: Hard Lessons About Buying My First Home

In November, I became a first time home owner and co-purchased a bigger home with my Mom. My family had been looking for a long time, but we could never agree on the right house until now. Fortunately, we found a newer home in a great community.

However, the process of buying my first home was super stressful and complicated. Since it had been so long since my parents had bought a home (we lived in ours for 15+ years), they forgot most of the details and I wound up having to figure out most of the details by myself 😮‍💨

All of this happened while I was transitioning into a new job and figuring out the details of moving to the U.S. as a Canadian expat. So let’s just say that the past couple months have been hectic!

In this 3-Part series, I am sharing what my first time home buying experience was like and some of the hard lessons that I learned along the way. Part 1 will focus on Due Diligence, Part 2 will focus on Financials, and Part 3 will focus on the Offer. Please enjoy this semi-rant 😬

#1 – Find a realtor through referrals 🗣

Over the summer, we had several different realtors that took us around the city to see different homes. We didn’t really have a preferred person, so we just went with the ones who were listed on the websites or For Sale signs.

Essentially, I saw some listings on a real estate website and scheduled a tour through there. One of the realtors reached out and showed us a couple homes. We stayed in touch after that and I liked that she was super friendly and quick at communicating.

Since she was the one who took us to see the home that we wanted, it felt natural to have her represent us in purchasing the home. However, there were a few times in the home buying process (after we committed to having her as our realtor) when I felt like she was more interested in closing the sale than looking out for our interests.

At the time, we had seen so many homes in the past and never liked any of them, so we didn’t really have high expectations. However, if I were to redo this process, I would’ve asked some more friends and family members to see if they recommended any realtors to work with. It would been ideal to work with someone who was more detail oriented because she made quite a few mistakes when sending us the purchase agreement and we had to go back and forth half a dozen times. I would also look for someone more experienced because it seemed like our realtor (although super friendly) wasn’t able to offer us any helpful advice or guidance.

#2 – Ask for an entire home inspection walk through 🏠

Our realtor offered to handle the booking of the home inspection which we appreciated (at the time but regret now) because we were busy trying to confirm the mortgage side of things. Our realtor said she would be there for the entire time, but she advised us to show up for the last 30 minutes of the home inspection (which takes 2.5-3 hours) where we would meet the home inspector to go over the report.

We assumed that showing up for the last 30 minutes was a standard process so we followed it. However, it wasn’t until I talked to one of my cousins that I realized you could actually attend the entire home inspection walk through. She mentioned that this was way better because you could take the time to assess the home yourself as well as see what the home inspector is doing, and ensure that they don’t do a half-ass job. Also, my cousin explained that her home inspector (in another city) actually explained every detail to her as they went through the home. This seemed way more helpful and effective than our experience, and I really wish we had asked for this.

#3 – Don’t rely on Google Reviews to find your home inspector ‼️

Oh, how I wish we had found a more thorough “5-star home inspector”…

To recap, our home inspector finished early and we met them at the home to ask some questions. Their main feedback was “this house is in great condition and there are basically no concerns” which was good to hear, but seemed a bit too optimistic for a 10 year old home. Whenever we tried to probe deeper about some areas around the home that we saw potential issues, we kept getting brushed off by both the home inspector and our realtor. Both of them constantly reminded us that the house was in great shape. They also didn’t go through the report with us like we expected. Instead, they said that they would send us a lengthy report by the end of day which we could go over on our own time and contact them with any questions 🤨

When I received the home inspection report, I was disappointed to say the least. It was filled with generic comments that made it seem as if the home inspector was more concerned with covering their own ass instead of giving us proper details and explanations about the actual condition of the home. After reviewing the 80 page report, I had to compile a list of 40 questions because all of the statements were so vague and unhelpful. I even compared it with my cousin’s inspection report, which was way more thorough.

When I shared my questions and asked for more details, the home inspector basically told me to Google the answers and move on with our purchase because his company is the highest rated and most detailed company out there… (let’s just say that this response wasn’t very helpful 😒)

One month after moving in, we started noticing some issues that were deemed “great condition” in the home inspection report. This, along with many other factors, leads me to believe that they weren’t as thorough as they claimed… (P.S. feel free to ping me if you want to know who this is so you can avoid them lol). If we had a later condition date, we might have considered hiring another home inspector (more on this in Part 2).

#4 – Check your fridge compartments during the final walk through 🔎

This one is a bit annoying since I had done a LOT of research on what to do for a pre-possession walk through (which happens 24 hours before Possession Day). I had compiled a master checklist of everything we needed to check out, and everything looked in good condition…

Until we moved in and my parents pulled out the fridge drawers to clean everything. Basically, they found that everything was cracked up and in semi-usable but poor condition. We asked our lawyer about this but again, he said this is something that would’ve needed to be added to the original purchase agreement. When we mentioned this to our realtor, her response was along the lines of “oh, I guess we could have done that but who would have known!” (sigh 😪)

And so, for the next month my family and I were on the hunt for a brand new fridge (which I secretly wanted anyways because I didn’t like the original fridge that much). Despite everything, at least we ended up with a brand new stainless steel Whirlpool WRF555SDF complete with an ice maker and water dispenser 🙌

Stay tuned for more hard lessons about home buying!

The purpose of this series is to share some tips and learnings for one of the most important purchasing decisions that you will make in your life. These are all things that I wish I had known in advance so hopefully you learned a thing or two so far! Please stay tuned for more hard lessons about Financials in Part 2 and the Offer in Part 3.

Thanks for reading and be sure to like, share, or leave a comment!