I want to believe that the ozoni soup we eat on New Year’s morning is full of luck, so I’m giving it some credit for the first two months of 2012. That morning, we toasted to the possibility of new beginnings– new hobbies, new employment, and — for us — a new home.
A few days earlier, we were asked by our landlords — for what seemed to be the final, we-mean-business time– to move out of our apartment, in a month. The 3-bedroom flat had been rented by my husband’s family for 40+ years. Great location, big backyard, sunny front rooms, and so forth. It was also super noisy, a bit run-down, and the backyard looked like a jungle. It was home, but our time there had come to an end.
My hazy, distant idea of homeownership kept nagging at me. I’d dreamed of making that purchase, even though it seemed completely unreasonable at our income level in San Francisco. And then, a couple of friends encouraged us to think about owning even if we had to grasp on to the very bottom of the market. If we were ever going to try, why not try now?
Next day, I called my credit union to sputter into the phone: “My husband and I are interested in, uh, learning, um, more about a potential home loan. Who should we speak to get the, well, very basics?” Mortgage broker on the other end of the line, with a chuckle: “First time homebuyers? Sure, let’s talk for a few minutes.”
Over the next couple of days, we:
- learned everything we could about home loans
- crunched numbers
- asked our friends for a referral to the realtor who had recently helped them purchase a beautiful home (awesome referral, thank you forever)
- contacted that realtor to see if she was taking on new clients at our purchase-level (yes, she was + let’s met next week)
- attended open houses that very first Sunday of January (SOMA, Japantown, and Outer Richmond)
- negotiated a 2-1/2 month move-out plan with our landlords
Of the open houses we visited, we really liked the condo out by Ocean Beach. When we met our realtor fa few days later, she noted it along with some other places to see that weekend. Two days later, we had a pre-approval letter from our lender (referred to us by our realtor) and we were off and running!
to be continued….
