The Journey To Our First Home

We had always dreamt of our first home. What it would look like, the story it had, the memories it would hold for us. A quintessential New England home - could it be ours? Well, we’d sure as hell try for it. ;)

When moving back to Massachusetts from California in 2020, it was our #1 goal. Settle in to our temporary apartment, but then get right into the house search. Around April of 2020, we dove in when we found a lender we clicked well with and felt comfortable making such a big (if not, the biggest) purchase of our lives.

I’m sure you’ve heard this already, but… it’s completely a seller’s market right now. Buyers will do just about anything to get the house. Forgo a home inspection. And, offer all cash for the house (how?). We began making a list of all the homes we saw and with each one we “lost”, we learned soon after it went far over asking. Like $20K, $40K, $60K over. More. We just couldn’t do that.

Our open house list grew and grew. When our lender told us he and his wife saw 25 homes before finding the one, I laughed, but we were soon there too. We hit 25 and then 50 and then 75. We saw homes every weekend, showing after showing, wearing masks and waiting in ridiculously long lines outside in the cold, wondering “How can we compete with this many people?” Sometimes we came close but time and time again, we fell short. Gut punch, everytime, because you start to envision your life there and then “poof”, it’s gone.

Around the holidays, we decided to take a break. Our realtor mentioned many people didn’t move during the snowy winters and often would wait so their kids could stay in school the whole year. So we enjoyed our first Christmas back in MA with not much focus on the home buying process (though we were constantly getting listing notifications that we couldn’t help but sneak a peek at). Nonetheless, we stayed pretty quiet on that front.

The winter came and went, and so arrived spring. As we neared the start of summer, we were back to seeing houses on weeknights and weekends, now over a year into our search. We were tired and defeated. We had come close to getting a couple houses, being told we were #2 or #3, but our offer fell just short compared to others. How many times could we go through this again and again? Many times, Sam and I would wonder if we should just keep saving and stay put. Was it even worth all this trouble?

Then, we saw our house. What jumped out right away was the wrap-around porch, large yard and character (it’s from 1918). It was in a town I was familiar with but with so many years past, it felt new and exciting to me. It was close to my family and friends, offered great schools for Henry, had the layout we had been wanting and even ammenities that we weren’t sure we would get (2-car garage, hardwood floors throughout, all the bedrooms on the same floor…). We knew we’d have to make an offer on this one.

Remember how I said we’d never go over asking? Well…. we did. We had to. If there was anything we learned over the past year+ it was that we had to be competitive and stand out in some way. We were just another name, another nunber to the sellers. We needed to be seen, and at the end of the day, our offer needed to be accepted. This was very black and white. We had to take our emotions out of it.

So we went home, enjoyed our night (as much as we could) and played the waiting game. A game we were getting pretty used to at this point.

Around 9pm a couple nights after our offer was put in, we got a call. It was our realtor.

“Are you both together?” she asked. (She had never asked us this before when calling.)

“Ummmm…” I said, while getting up and walking over to Sam. “Yeah.”

“Well,” she said. “They accepted your offer!”

We could not believe it. Us? We were the people? We got the house?

“Are you kidding us?! Really? We got it?”

“You got it, guys. Congratulations.”

The next few weeks looked like this:
- Somewhat relaxing couples trip to the Cape, but add in buying a printer and talking with our lender a lot through paperwork and documents they needed.
- Setting up a home inspection on the last possible day (the day we returned from our getaway).
- Getting our most current paystubs sent over to the bank.
- Going over home inspection results and talking with our realtor through details we wanted to go back to the sellers on.
- Nervously waiting for our home appraisal …. it appraised!
- Trying to work and manage incoming home-buying process requests
- Signing all the papers
- Writing checks
- Working through what repairs/updates we wanted to make before moving in.
- Making our down payment (gulp).

I’m sure I’m missing a ton of other things but, wow, it was a blur. Home searching/buying with a toddler while working is a lot. It definitely required a ton of patience, faith and persistence - I’ll tell you that. We were able to lean on our families to watch Henry here and there, and can’t thank them enough for that.

Since closing in mid-June, we’ve made some repairs, painted all the downstairs rooms, bought some new furniture, and set up for our big move.

In the end, we are so, so happy with the house we get to call our first home. It’s perfect for our little family and there’s room to grow! We’re excited that this weekend, after having closed two months ago, we get to finally settle in and call it home sweet home. We’re pretty nervous to be homeowners — with all that comes with that — but ready to put some roots down and make this place our own.

To the homebuying process — what a ride you’ve been! So many ups, so many downs, but somehow we made it. You sure taught us a lot. But I’m so ready to not have to do it again, at least for a long, long time.

If you’re in the middle of the process now, keep going. Your house is out there, even if it doesn’t feel like it. Keep your eyes ahead. Don’t settle. Trust your gut.

-Ari