pictures of houses

As I make payments for content insurance, property tax, and mortgage prepayment, I realize that it has been a year since I bought the adorablest apartment.

Holy.

In some ways it hasn’t quite sunk in that I am a homeowner. I am a bit of a slow learner that way. Lief will attest to the fact that I randomly say “Can you believe that this is our apartment?” once every couple of weeks. It is still exciting.

Before moving in, we did so much work… painting, caulking, sanding, cleaning, rewiring, drilling, and laying of floors. Since we actually moved in last October, I would say that we have spent a grand total of about 10 hours doing any additional renovations. I can safely say that I will not become a property flipper any time soon. Organizing and carrying out renovations, and actually managing to stick within a reasonable budget, is not my strongest skill. We went a little nuts buying supplies, appliances and eating out for every single meal for six weeks – and are just now recovering from the financial chaos brought on by the months of transition into the new place.

Along the way, I met some people that I didn’t know anything about: real estate agent, financial planner, building inspector, insurance agent.

I also had the misfortune of using the services of some other humans that made their way onto my shit list: mortgage broker, notary public.

You know, it was exciting to buy my little home. This was made more entertaining by the Lower Mainland housing market – which ensured that my real estate agent and I had to meet at midnight or later on more than one occasion. There were offers, counter-offers, deals were accepted and others fell through.

After the first apartment that I made an accepted offer on fell through (and I was feeling confident in my decision to walk away from it, yet was no less bummed out), Lief and I drove past a three-storey building that looked adorable. There were fun little gardens and everything looked well taken care of. All the trim was painted blue. We stopped the car and talked about what a great location the apartment was in.

A year later, The Dorchester, blue trim and all, is our home.

Things that I learned:

- If you have any sort of relationship with the company you currently bank with *plus* you are willing and able to go to a few appointments with financial peoples at some competing institutions, there is no need for a mortgage broker. I found the mortgage broker to be a hassle and ended up wanting to kill him on the day that I took possession of the property. In the end, my own credit union would have given me the same rate that the mortgage broker was able to provide. You can educate yourself on mortgage options by looking around online and just talking to people you know who have one. Simple.

- Make sure that your credit cards or lines of credit are payed off and that you have some liquid money available. This will be needed during the transfer of possession.

- I strongly urge people to buy a home that is $20,000 less than what they feel they can afford. You will, inevitably, underestimate costs of the professionals that you hire during the process (lawyer, real estate agent, movers, whatever) and also the level of work that needs to be done to the home to make it *your* home.

- Don’t use a notary public. Spend the extra money on a lawyer – and get one that comes with a personal recommendation from someone you know.

- If possible, don’t move in before major renovation things are done. This is especially important if you are buying a small place (which is the only option for most of us in Vancouver!).

- You have to keep yourself from falling in love with a single aspect of a new home to the point where it clouds out your judgment in other areas. Awesome location is not that important when you have overlooked the fact that the building has an impending special assessment of an undecided/ undisclosed amount.

- Set an absolute limit to what you can afford.