Home Buying During COVID-19 Part Two

If you missed Part One, you can go back and read the process leading up to getting a house under contract. It wasn't a smooth process, and it lasted a few months, but we finally got a house under contract.

Now, the "Under Contract" phase of home buying is my personal least favorite. I don't like waiting. I don't like the unknown.

If you're unfamiliar with the home buying process, it goes a lot like this:

1. Get Pre-Approved

2. Look at houses

3. Make an offer

4. Become "Under Contract" (after an agreement is reached)

5. Turn in your Earnest money

6. Inspection Period

7. Appraisal

8. Closing

• Financially, there's a lot more to the process that happens with lenders, and I won't even begin to pretend like I know each of those phases. But there's a lot that could go wrong within that process. Fortunately, ours was pretty straight forward there. You need to send in a lot of documents, and don't get wild with your spending during this phase.

Turning in Earnest Money

Earnest Money shows that you're serious about entering a contract, and it's a portion of the sale that you put down right away.

This is the easiest part of the process, but I still managed to mess it up to start. When you turn in your earnest money, you literally just need to bring a check to a Land Title location and get a receipt.

I managed to drop my wallet in my driveway on my way to the place, and didn't realize until I got all the way there. After some panic, and excessive driving, I was back at Land Title to drop off the check. This was super fast, and I stood in the lobby in my face mask as the woman took my address and check and returned with a receipt.

The Inspection Period

To make sure you are aware of all the issues on the house before purchasing.

Home inspections aren't cheap, but they'll save you a lot of headache in the long run. You'll want to get a good home inspector as early as you can. The inspector won't be an expert in everything, but they'll know what things need to be looked further into if need be.

Our home inspector ended up being the same guy that inspected our previous house which felt like a full circle moment.

Because of COVID-19 precautions, we weren't able to stay at the house the whole time he performed the inspection (like we did last time) but instead, I showed up towards the end of the inspection to quickly review what he found and if anything was particularly problematic.

Most of the things he found were minor. However, he mentioned some foundation concern on one part of the house, roof and gutters needed attention, and higher radon levels in the basement.

Since he's not a structural engineer, we needed to hire one to take a better look at the area that was concerning. Again, not a cheap hire, but one that can save a lot of headache down the road.

We hired a structural engineer after I did some research on both reviews and on cost. They came out pretty quickly and let us know that the wall of concern just needed proper grading outside of it, as there was evidence of water issues in the past on it, and it appeared that the water pushed the wall in a bit awhile back.

This was GREAT news, as grading alongside a house is much easier and more cost effective than putting in new foundation.

So we put in the request for the 3 items of concern: sewer line clean and repair, roof fixed, and the radon mitigation.

Unfortunately, our seller would not work with us on two of the three. He was willing to get the roof fixed, but didn't see the other two as a concern for him. (Really not pleased with this, as his old age was clouding his judgement on health and safety concerns. He said, "we didn't worry about radon in my day..." so that's a fun challenge when buying a house- dealing with the seller's personal views vs. logic)

After debating about it a bit, we decided that we loved this house and location, so we were willing to take on those fix expenses ourselves after we moved in. Onto the appraisal phase...

The Appraisal Phase

This is when a 3rd party appraiser comes out to give the house a value based on the condition it's in and the comps in the area. This is to ensure that your lender is lending you an appropriate amount for it.

Our appraisal revealed that the house was valued at $6k lower than the amount we agreed upon. Once again, the seller didn't take this well and said, "well then I can just take it off the market and make a couple fixes to get that amount" So yes, you understood that correctly, this man was willing to toss our contract to ensure he got the amount in his head he thought it was worth...

Once again, we discussed it, and after the inspection money we'd already sunk into it and as far as we've gotten in the process, we just made up the difference ourselves.

"Stressful" is an understatement on this process. I really do not like the "under contract" period of the process, but it's unavoidable. (I guess, unless you show up with cash? I'm not sure how that works, but if you can buy a house with cash, kudos my friend. That's impressive)

Closing

This is all of the official documents to make the house yours.

This is the easiest part of the process. Your realtor will give you a location and a time to go sit in a conference room and sign SO MANY papers. Then, there's a slight break while they wait for confirmation from your lender, and then you sign a ton more papers.

It's the easiest and least stressful part of the process, and you walk out with the house keys.

So we've got a new house now.

And there's a ton of work to be done, but we are about 3 weeks in and I've painted just about every room, and unpacked 99% of our stuff. We've got contractors coming in and out quite a bit working on bathrooms and other various projects. Once we close on the selling of our previous home, we will start the kitchen renovation which I am SO EXCITED for, as this one currently is very dated and cramped.

If you're going through this process, be patient, stick to logic over emotion when making decisions, and know that sometimes the seller will be difficult. It's up to you on how you navigate forward. Buying a house is a big decision. A big, wonderful, stressful, decision...