Hi, I’m Alli! After years of watching HGTV, I thought that buying a home would be simple and seamless. But boy… was I was wrong. After jumping through what seemed like hundreds of hoops and facing obstacles I didn’t know how to navigate, my partner and I moved into our Edmonton dream home in May 2020. Now, don’t let the above scare you—in the end, it was alllll worth it. And if I figured it out, I promise you can too. Here are 9 things I wish I knew before buying my first home.
1. Get Preliminary Mortgage Approval Before You Even Start Looking
To be completely honest, my partner and I weren’t seriously considering purchasing a home when we first started looking. We saw an Instagram ad for a beautiful downtown loft and decided we wanted to view it. But once we walked in, we were head over heels and decided this was the path we wanted to take (spoiler, we didn’t end up buying this home). The moment we got home from our viewing, we hopped on our laptops and visited our banking websites. The process of getting preliminary approval is actually very easy. It quickly takes your income, credit score and other information into account and provides you with how much you may be able to borrow. But it’s important to know that just because you got preliminary approval for a certain amount, doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll actually what you’ll get (it’s usually wayyy lower).
2. Find Yourself The Right REALTOR® For You
I consider myself very lucky, because the realtor I ended up going with was actually somebody I knew through a friend (shout out to Elisse from Truhome!). We got along famously, and both my partner and I felt super comfortable communicating what we wanted in a home and what we needed from her. If you ask me, finding a realtor that you’re compatible with is critical. But it’s just as important to find someone who has experience and can confidently advocate and negotiate on your behalf. And lucky for us—we had both of those qualities Elisse. Though we really, really liked the very first home we viewed, Elisse recommended we view a few more to test the waters. After a few “meh” viewings, we walked into our dream home—and that’s when we knew it was go time.
3. Finding A Lender Isn’t As Easy As It Seems
It was now time to take the next step: finding a lender. This is where the preliminary online approval meets full pre-approval. Though these were terms I hadn’t heard before and didn’t even know where to start, Elisse luckily had a contact for a licensed mortgage associate who could work with us. After just meeting Dallas, our mortgage associate, I was in constant communication with her. Through daily phone calls, I had to get a lot of information and documents to her, such as SIN numbers, employment agreements, pay stubs, credit scores, etc. The phone calls truly felt endless, so be sure you get a mortgage associate that you actually like talking to (FYI, Dallas was great)! The home we were interested in came with an added twist: it was a heritage home. Sounds like no biggie, right? Wrong. Lenders actually quite dislike heritage homes—especially for young, first time home buyers. Heritage homes (AKA older homes) come with added risks that a lot of lenders don’t want to deal with, so most of them prefer not to get involved. But finally, despite being told that it was unlikely we would get lender approval on our dream home, a lender finally gave us an offer—which we promptly accepted. Yay! But this didn’t come without having to make changes in our desired down payment, mortgage length and mortgage rate.
4. Remember That The Timing Will Never Be “Right”
Like I already mentioned, my partner and I weren’t even considering buying a home when we first started looking. And what’s more—we were heading into a global pandemic in the first months of our home buying journey. There were countless moments where we thought that we should just put it on pause and revisit at another time. Afterall, we weren’t even set on buying a home! But as they say—when you know, you know. And we knew we’d regret it if we didn’t move forward in purchasing our dream home.
5. You Can Negotiate Anything You Want
Just when we thought the most stressful part was over, we now had to put in an offer on the condo and go through negotiations. This is something both my partner and I had no experience in, but thankfully we had our trusty realtor, Elisse, on our side. After a couple days of back and forth negotiating the cost of the home and the possession date, our offer was finally accepted! What I didn’t know before purchasing a home was that you can truly negotiate on anything you want. Do you reeeally like that dining set? Negotiate that it says with the home! For us, we saw a piece of art on the wall that we absolutely adored—it was a photo of the condo building from the 1950s. In addition, we also were able to negotiate a smaller asking price because the home wasn’t professionally cleaned.
6. The Inspection Can Make Or Break It
Oh wait, it’s not over yet?! When it came time for the inspection, we had a unique experience. The moment we got to the condo for the inspection, we realized there was a flood in the laundry room… not a good start. But that was quickly rectified by property management and we moved on with it. Truth be told, there were quite a few issues that the home inspector discovered. The roof and foundation had some damage, the fireplace was broken, and it had some electrical problems. If we wanted, we could have walked away right then and there and gotten our deposit back without any issues. But as you already know, we didn’t go that route. What helped with our decision to move forward was going through a third-party condo document inspection service that took a deep dive into all our condo documents to ensure there wasn’t anything fishy going on. As it turns out, our condo had an impressive reserve fund that had more than enough to cover any needed (or surprise) maintenance.
7. Don’t Forget About All Of The Hidden Closing Costs
Closing costs are real. They say that you should expect to pay 2-5% of your home’s value in closing costs, and this is something we definitely didn’t account for. After all the legal fees, appraisals, land title changes, pre-paid property taxes, condo document inspections and more… it quickly adds up. So, ensure you have a large buffer to be able to pay these added expenses!
8. Closing Day Isn’t Always Possession Day
This is a minor detail that truly caught me off guard. After hiring a moving company to help us move on closing day, our realtor told us that sometimes you don’t actually get possession on your closing date. Wait—what?! You know when you send an e-Transfer to your friend, but they don’t receive it for hours, maybe even days? The same thing goes for home transfers. On the rare occasion, the transfer simply gets delayed. Meaning, you don’t get the keys to your home until the old homeowner receives the money. Usually, the transfer is sent early in the morning on closing day and gets successfully deposited mid-day. Thankfully for us, this was the exact case—we got our keys around 1 PM and started moving our things at 3 PM.
9. You’ll Never Be Happier
This may seem obvious, but you don’t really know how owning your first home feels like until it happens to you. Turning the key and opening the door to my first home was truly one of the proudest moments of my life! Even though we were living through the first few months of a pandemic, hadn’t seen our friends in family in months, and had no furniture except for a mattress and plastic chairs due to delays in deliveries—we were in pure bliss. Jumping through what felt like hundreds of hoops was so, so worth it in the end.
Are you thinking of purchasing your first home? It doesn’t hurt to contact a realtor and see what’s on the market right now. If you’d like to learn more about my experience, feel free to reach out! Otherwise, I know that my friends at TruHome will be a fabulous help.
Featured Guest Blogger:
Alli Harrison is an Edmonton-based marketing & communications professional with extensive experience working with small businesses. Learn all about her by visiting her Instagram, Twitter & LinkedIn.
Note: Each client’s journey towards home ownership is unique and their own. Curious about the process of buying an Edmonton home, book an Edmonton home buyer consultation today to discuss the steps in the journey. While there is a general guide to getting there, sometimes, the path to get there will shift based on individual client needs and service.
