6 Things We Learned Buying Our First Home

Woof.

If I had to choose one word to describe our first home buying experience, that would be it - woof. It’s been almost two years, and the experience still sends shivers down my spine. There were tears, faked documents, very unhelpful realtors, a pandemic, virtually nonexistent sellers - the whole shebang! (And no, our experience was NOT normal.)

We had two great things come out of it, though: A good house and a lot of home buying know-how. Because of how wild our experience was, I want to share some of the valuable lessons we learned and provide advice and specific recommendations to other young home buyers.

Key detail: We bought our home in Texas during Spring 2020 when the housing market was much more “normal “ than it is today.

Use a Recommended Realtor

HOME BUYING TIP: Your realtor is the “go-between” for almost everything required to make one of the biggest purchases of your life. Documents from all parties (seller, title company, notary, etc.) go through them, they make a fat commission, and you will talk to them daily. Needless to say, you want someone you click with who has experience in the industry, understanding of the process, and a fantastic eye for detail.

OUR EXPERIENCE: It was late February 2020 when we agreed that buying a home was the right next step for us, and it immediately felt urgent. I remember trolling home listing websites constantly in search of something within our price range that met our specifications. When we found the first contender, we inquired on the listing through Zillow, and we had a realtor call within minutes. At the time, we were like “Wow! This customer service can’t be beat!” In reality, this should have been a red flag. We’ve since learned that realtors or agencies cold calling from home listing sites tend to be either low on clients or of lesser experience.

TAKEAWAY: Using a realtor recommended by a trusted friend who can speak highly of their experience is key.

2. Pay for an Independent Inspection…Twice

HOME BUYING TIP: After you make an offer on a home and it’s accepted, you enter into the “option period.” During this time, you should pay for an independent inspection to ensure that everything is in safe, working order. If you find major issues, you have the option to walk away from the house.

If you find only minor issues here and there and you want to move forward, you take the “bad findings” and create a request list for the seller to fix. (FYI: It’s very normal for sellers not to agree to all changes, but definitely throw it all out there. It never hurts to ask!) After your requests are sent off, a lot of buyers tend to just trust the changes will be made or they assume they’ll be able to check on all of the changes through subsequent walkthroughs. If you really trust your seller, you’re probably fine. We absolutely did not. (I’m getting there…)

OUR EXPERIENCE: We opted to pay for a second inspection to ensure the fixes on our agreed upon request list were actually made. A lot led up to this decision, but one key detail that you should know is that we were buying from a company that flips houses rather than an individual or family. In our second inspection we caught a lot of “shotty” work that had to be redone, some of which was completed literally minutes before we closed. <eye roll>

TAKEAWAY: Pay. For. A. Follow Up. Inspection. ESPECIALLY if you are buying from a 3rd party and not the actual home owners.

3. Consider Hiring a Structural Engineer

HOME BUYING TIP: You receive a lot of information about the house before you ever make an offer — including something called the “Seller’s Disclosure.” This is a standardized form where the seller ticks boxes to confirm the house has certain rooms, features, and prior fixes. If you notice your house had prior foundation repairs or you can see major cracks in the walls or driveway - hire a structural engineer. Foundation, plumbing, & electricity are the 3 most important things to check when buying a home.

OUR EXPERIENCE: Our house had prior foundation repairs with an accompanying warranty, so we looked up the repair company online and called to ensure the papers were legitimate and the warranty was still valid. We then hired an independent structural engineer to come assess the house and ensure the foundation repairs were done correctly. Once he gave us the green light, we took a huge sigh of relief. Fixing a foundation is super expensive, so a couple hundred dollars spent on the inspection could have saved us thousands of dollars down the road had the inspection gone sideways.

TAKEAWAY: If your house has had major prior repairs, hire the appropriate professionals to double check that everything was done well so that you aren’t hit with a huge repair bill down the road.

4. Conduct a Hydrostatic Plumbing Test

HOME BUYING TIP: Foundation, plumbing, and electricity are the 3 things that have to be right, remember? We covered foundation, so let’s talk plumbing. A hydrostatic test checks your entire plumbing system for leaks to ensure that it’s functioning properly. A hydro-what? Basically, a plumber fills yours pipes with water to max capacity and monitors the water levels for about 30-60 minutes. If the water levels drop, you have a leak. If they hold, you’re gucci. Houses built before 1980 often times have cast iron plumbing if it hasn’t already been updated. If your house was built before the 80s (ours was built in 1972) - get a hydrostatic test.

OUR EXPERIENCE: I’ll try to make this quick, but this story is the reason we had trust issues with our seller. We were told the seller had a hydrostatic test performed just a few months before we put in an offer, so we asked our realtor to track down the results of that test. When we received them from our realtor, I noticed that the test read “PASS” but there was also a hand written note right beside the result that read “line wouldn’t fill.” That didn’t add up to me. (Reference test details above).

I sent it back to the realtor and told her to try again. (Why didn’t she catch this? Here’s your reminder to get a good realtor.) She went back to the seller with our findings and came back to us within the hour with results that read “FAILED” with the same handwritten note that said “line wouldn’t fill.” Someone faked the first document, that much was clear, but had I not read the initial test documents carefully, we would have been out $10k for a failed plumbing system the day we closed on the house. Instead, we caught this major issue, and the sellers ended up taking on the repairs at their expense. (...and because #trustissues, we paid for a second hydrostatic test after repairs were done to ensure the work was done well.)

TAKEAWAY: First and foremost - READ! Re: Biggest purchase of your life. If your house has cast iron plumbing, I highly recommend paying for an independent hydrostatic test. Spending a few hundred dollars today vs. a potential $10K later is totally worth it.

5. Check the Nooks and Crannies

HOME BUYING TIP: Great paint, beautiful light fixtures, and nice floors bring the wow factor, but they can also distract you from the little details that can tell you a lot about the true state of your prospective home. This was our first rodeo, and we were so blinded by the huge soaker tub that we didn’t even think to look at the baseboards, the lazy caulking, the hastily laid grout, the instability of the floating shelves — all the little things that bother us now.

OUR EXPERIENCE: Our house isn’t going to fall down - that much we know. BUT, there were a lot of things we didn’t know to check for. Here’s a short list of things we noticed after living in the house for a few weeks:

The vent tube for our dryer (that is behind sheetrock, mind you) was installed backwards, so we had to pay for someone to come fix that before we could use our dryer.
They used 1/3 of the necessary screws when they hung our floating shelves, so we had to reinforce all of them.
The area where the sink water line in our half bath meets the dry wall needed a cap to finish it off. Instead we have a lovely little hole.
The door that leads to the garage is missing a door sweep, so there’s a gap between the tile and the door frame.
They did a poor job grouting the tile in our primary bath, so there’s dried grout on the face of the tile in certain areas that is a bear to try to get off.

The list could go on, and I’m aware that a lot of these things are just cosmetic. The point I’m trying to drive home here is that these details prove it was a rushed flip, and we will definitely be taking those small details as “indicators” moving forward.

TAKEAWAY: Look inside closets, along door thresholds, along tiled floors, etc. to see the true attention to detail present (or missing) from the house you’re buying. In our experience, it was indicative of the overall quality of the work.

6. Read, Read, and Read Some More

HOME BUYING TIP: Home buying involves a lot of paperwork, contracts, and money. If you don’t want to take the time to truly read and understand what you’re buying - keep renting. Being a lazy homebuyer only hurts YOU! Having a keen eye and attention to detail will serve you well, and the hard work you put into the process will make you appreciate your home so much more.

OUR EXPERIENCE: Had I glossed over the hydrostatic test and just trusted that the seller actually fixed all the agreed upon repairs, we would be out well over $15k in additional money spent on this house at this point - and that’s a conservative estimate. Reading can mean the difference between your house costing $400,000 and $415,000. That’s a big difference! For two years I was an auditor, so I did have some experience with contracts and experience exercising professional skepticism. I’ve since taken on a new career, but I was never more thankful for that auditing experience than I was throughout the home buying process.

TAKEAWAY: Read. All. Documents. Thoroughly. A little extra time reading could save you $10,000. No exaggeration.