How I Bought My Dream Home In Austin, TX For Under Asking Price Within A Month Of Searching
Luck. That’s how. Thanks for reading!
I think we can all agree that the real estate market has been uncharitable to buyers lately. When much of the world came to a halt at the start of 2020, nobody could have known that would be the last chance to purchase a home at a reasonable price. Remote work became the norm and those with the ability to uproot their lives and move to a more affordable city did so at such a frantic pace that those cities were soon no longer affordable. Austin, Texas had already been growing rapidly for the past decade, but mid-pandemic migration was the veritable shot of steroids to the budding bodybuilder’s veins. That is to say, the city’s population got pumped.
Am I mentioning all of this to wax poetic about how this growth has made it impossible for Austinites to afford property in a city they’d long since known as their home? You bet! I’ve written several Medium articles about my major life changes, from joining a coding bootcamp to moving to Austin in December 2017 to become a software engineer. I’ve also written about my on again, off again efforts to save up for a house dating back to August 2019; in hindsight, I sure wish I would have poured more gas over those flames when I had the chance. You know what mother always says though: there’s no use in crying over spilt milk now clean it up before I give you something to cry about.
But I’m not done crying. When the pandemic started going into full swing last March, the optimist in me thought “oh yes excellent, in terms of the housing market that is, literally everything else right now is a greek tragedy”. For a fleeting moment, the temporarily stall in home sales seemed to indicate that us 90s babies were about to realize their dreams and leap headfirst into decades of commitment. Every successive month proceeded to prove us wrong as listing prices jumped, flipped, and somersaulted by tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. It had become the Money Olympics and most of us couldn’t even hope to compete.
Let’s jump forward to April 2021 and the whole point of this post. I had started speaking to a mortgage broker and getting a plan set up to shop for a house in 2 years’ time. My net worth was tied up in a vehicle I’d purchased last March and dumped $13,000 into because self-defeating behavior provides the best kind of high you can buy. I’d been on a kick of buying and selling cars at a fairly rapid pace, spending hours combing through Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace for the next mistake.
Making money moves
This habit got me familiar with the sales prices and trends of vehicles, knowledge that would end up playing a crucial role in my home purchase. The pandemic brought the production of microchips and everything that uses those chips to a crawl, especially automobiles. Anything with four wheels experienced a surge in price. Off road trucks and SUVs in particular soared in demand due to people wanting to explore the outdoors after having been stuck in their homes for months, and it just so happens that the vehicle I purchased last March was an off road SUV.
As vehicles similar to mine sold for record highs, I saw the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. If I could break even on what I had invested in my hooptie, I would have enough money for a down payment and could end up with some shiny new house keys by the end of the year! Invigorated by this realization, I snapped some pictures and made several listings online. One prospective buyer reached out to set up a test drive and before long, we were at my bank depositing a cashiers check. That pretty little slip of paper provided me with the means to start house shopping, so I did just that.
The storm before the storm
With all that extra cheddar in my pocket, I reached out to my mortgage broker asking to get the ball rolling on the loan qualification process as well as for a referral to a realtor. Since the cheddar was money and not actual cheese, he was happy to oblige. Getting qualified instead of prequalified was a fairly involved process that took several weeks, but it meant I would be able to make an offer on the spot and know it would be backed up by the lender. The thought of getting an offer accepted only to saddle the already stressful closing period with credit checks and submission of several documents from myself and my job’s HR department was enough to keep me up at night.
Although I had originally gone into this endeavor not willing to settle for anything less than an honest to goodness house with a backyard and a front yard and yards in all other perceivable directions, I realized that criteria limited me to properties in Round Rock, Pflugerville and adjacent areas. Those parts of Austin are least 15 miles away from my usual stomping grounds and would reintroduce a sizable commute into my life, which was one of the reasons I left Miami in the first place. I decided to check out condominiums and townhouses instead, with a focus on the latter due to the additional privacy and my reluctance to take an elevator or stairs up to my own front door.
I had started looking at listings on Zillow and was getting anxious about the rate at which homes were selling, with an average duration of 3–5 days on the market. It didn’t help that I’d also spun myself into a rage by reading articles about investment firms buying up swaths of homes and buyers from out of state making ludicrous offers most Austinites couldn’t hope to compete with. By the time I was connected with my realtor at the beginning of July, I was chomping at the bit to check out properties and throw my hat into the endless sea of offers. After all, I needed only one of them to get accepted, right?
Before the tours began, my realtor had me fill out a homebuyer’s hope-list to get an idea of my home requirements in regards to features, space, location, and neighborhood. Oh, and one other minor detail called price.
Baby’s first viewings (i’m baby)
Hope-list in hand, my realtor signed up for the MLS listing platform where I would receive emails for new listings that met my search criteria. Like an ungraceful hairless hawk, I swooped on every listing that came my way, taking notes on what I liked and disliked and whether I wanted to see it in person. Within a few days of searching, I decided to start with a bang and check out three properties in a single afternoon. Friday, July 9 2021 was set to be a momentous day in my life! And so it was, because my car spun out in the rain on my way home from the gym and got intimate with a curb, rendering it inoperable. I was grateful that I didn’t hit anyone or anything, but knew this would complicate things. I texted my agent telling her the bad news only for her to immediately offer to drive me to the last two viewings of the day if I could catch an Uber to the first one! I did just that and before long I was walking up to a quaint little two-story 3 bed/2 bath townhouse. Parking was plentiful, the swimming pool had a terrific view of…some grass, and the sturdy old trees dotting the area provided excellent shade. Cell phone service sure did suck, though.
You know what didn’t suck? The townhouse itself. I was immediately captivated by the hardwood floors, butcher block kitchen countertops, and cozy living room with a brick fireplace I knew I’d never use. I was warned not to fall in love with every place I saw, but rules were meant to be broken and I found myself writing wedding vows as I walked around and took in all the sights. The downstairs bedroom had direct access to the patio outside (did I mention there was a patio because if not by the way there was a patio) and the third bedroom would work well as a home office or space for general lollygagging and merriment. The stairs and entire second floor were carpeted, but I was willing to look past that given everything else the place had to offer. Owning a set of stairs in itself is practically the millennial dream. The home was listed at $125k below my maximum purchase price, which was an astounding deal. Unsurprisingly, my realtor assured me that I’d have to offer above asking price if I wanted to stay competitive. That was the plan for every place I was looking at anyway, since offering asking price in Austin is about as effective as running in your dreams.
We then made our way to the next showing, a 2/2 condo tucked away by I-35. Though I hoped comparing the two places wouldn’t be a rough and bumpy transition, I had nothing to worry about because the roads surrounding the complex did all the roughening and bumpening for me. I make no exaggeration when I say those were the worst roads I’ve ever been on. They turned parking into an off-roading adventure. The front entrance wasn’t too promising — this condo was on the first floor, meaning I’d have upstairs neighbors and upstairs neighbor noises, which 9 out of 10 dentists advise against (the 10th dentist is the upstairs neighbor). I’m happy to report that things got much better as I stepped inside the unit and was greeted with a spacious living room, an open-concept kitchen, and hard👏wood👏floors👏. An exposed brick wall stood adjacent to a pair of doors that opened out to the parking lot, which I found to be useful if not a bit concerning in regards to security. The bad news bears continued their world tour from here, as the secondary bedroom was diminutive. It was so small, in fact, that whoever decorated the room placed a bed made for actual ants in it to make it seem like there was more space than there actually was.
Things improved a bit upon entering the master bedroom. It had plenty of space and a small but modern attached bathroom with a standing shower instead of a bathtub. I’m not much of a tubthumping man, so I could appreciate that kind of setup. Though smaller than the townhouse, this condo was priced about the same which either meant the townhouse was an even better deal than I’d expected or the seller of the condo was living in a fantasy land. It was at least worth keeping in consideration if I could get it for under asking price. All those thoughts would have to wait until later as we headed to the third and final showing of the day.
This last place was another 2/2 condo located near the UT Austin campus. We struggled to find the unit among the multiple floors and sections of the complex which didn’t instill promise in an easy move-in process. Upon finding and opening the right door hidden toward the back of a dimly-lit hallway, decade-old memories came flooding back as I was presented with the dormiest dorm to ever dorm. The dirty carpeted floor was separating in several spots, the walls were painted a soul-sucking mustard, and the kitchen invited you to make instant ramen and then never step foot in it again. These flaws still weren’t enough to outright exclude this place from consideration, though. The living space was plentiful, the giant windows provided lots of natural light, and each bedroom had an exit to an outdoor balcony. Still, the setup of the building reminded me a bit too much of my college living experience to warrant making an offer right there and then.
Grown man learns about due diligence
All I could think about was whether I stood a chance at making that townhouse my new home. I could certainly rationalize living in either of the two condos, but something about living next to big tree and owning the actual building called out to me. With that in mind, I told my realtor that I was ready to make an offer and wanted to get some additional information on all three places. This is where her assistant entered the picture and served as a vital source of knowledge — for every listing I requested information on, she would send over all of the documents she could get from the selling agent. I initially thought this shopping process would consist of looking at a place and keeping an eye out for any visual problems, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The seller’s documents for the townhouse were just what I wanted, showing no major issues and a below-market listing price in an area that has exploded in popularity. There wasn’t anything in the documents for the third place that steered me in any particular direction, but all of the steering was reserved for the second unit’s paperwork. The doors in the living room that opened to the parking lot turned out not to just be a security risk, but a structural one as well. The seller’s documents noted a history of flooding in the unit, along with pictures of discoloration in the wood floors. All of this up close and personal time with standing water actually resulted in foundation settling and the building itself not being level. I’m willing to take some risks, but I think it’s reasonable to draw the line at structural issues.
The offensively aggravating art of offers
I was ready to make my very first offer on the townhouse! It was listed at $325,000, but only the silliest goose in the pond would think they’d win the deal at that price. Though I wanted to shoot for the stars, my realtor kept the moon boots off my feet and suggested offering $350,000 to which I agreed. I could only offer as much as I could reasonably expect the home to appraise at. Let me take a minute to discuss that last bit, as I’m surprised it’s taken this long to mention it considering its importance in the Austin market.
The single most aggravating thing about shopping for a home in Austin is just how unaffordable everything has gotten. The third most aggravating thing is the constant trips in a U-Haul truck. Nestled in between the two is the madness of the market leading to appraisals trailing behind selling prices. You could strike gold and make a winning offer at or just above asking price, only for the appraisal to come back tens of thousands of dollars short, leaving you with four options:
- Ask the seller to lower the price to match the appraised value GOOD LUCK WITH THAT
- Appeal the appraisal, prolonging the closing process without a guarantee of getting the numbers closer to where you need them
- Fork over the difference in cold hard cash. Or it can be warm, like if you keep your cash in your pants or something. I don’t judge.
- Walk away from the sale altogether, losing your earnest money on top of the option fee if you agreed to an appraisal waiver that many sellers have now incorporated into their terms
The hilarity of having so little working in your favor in this process is not lost on me. All I could do now was make some aggressive offers and save the next bucket of stress for if/when one was accepted. My realtor sent over some documents to e-sign and within a few minutes I had officially made my first offer! I texted my parents and close friends with the good news and had myself a victory screech before snapping back to reality. I had to continue looking at more places to keep my mind busy and my chances of success high, so I spent the next few days window shopping on Zillow. All was quiet on the western front until a brand new listing hit my inbox, a 2/2.5 two story condo just a few minutes away from the gym. It was listed at $375,000 and the pictures sold me dreams I didn’t know I could have. It was around this time that I learned my offer on the townhouse didn’t win but I was already expecting that given that the sellers bumped the listing price up to $350,000 the day after I’d submitted my offer. I had a new place to obsess over, and fewer than 48 hours later we were pulling up to the neighborhood.
The dreamy facade cracked just a bit as I realized the first floor of the building was a parking garage and all of the units were on the second floor. It wasn’t as bad as the Q*bert-style adventure I had to embark upon with the second condo I had looked at but the sizable staircase did not promise a good time with moving anything that didn’t fit in an elevator. All of that mattered less once I feasted my eyes on the incredible setup within the unit. The first floor was an open concept floor plan with the living room leading directly into the kitchen. The downstairs bathroom would be perfect for having friends over and out of my room, which is something the last two places couldn’t offer. Things were a little less excellent upstairs as we noticed the bedrooms were small, but each one had its own bathroom and closet which was all I could really ask for. “Plus, the small rooms could be a reason for other potential buyers not to make an offer on the place” — that’s the dirty little lie I told myself as we left and noticed several other prospective buyers waiting outside. My realtor recommended offering 30k over the asking price and the optimist in me said that would definitely be enough to seal the deal.
Was it, in fact, enough? Am I living there right now, regaling my closest pals with tales of how I scored a win on my second offer in a red-hot housing market?
No. I’m sure the sellers looked at my offer and giggled an aristocratic giggle before selling the place for north of half a million dollars. Whatever. I wasn’t jaded, shut up. This practice of looking at brand new listings clearly wasn’t working in my favor, so I knew I’d have to change my approach if I ever wanted to go under contract.
West Campus window shopping
Quick, what’s the exact opposite of a brand-new listing? If you guessed a brand-old listing, you’ve just identified my next shopping strategy and should purchase a thesaurus. Most of the new listings would disappear within 5 days, so I presumed I’d stand a chance of snagging a property that was on the market for at least twice as long. One of the areas in Austin with a high density of such properties is West Campus, which is home to UT and UT accessories. A few friends advised against looking in the area but I figured I had nothing to lose. I made a list of 10 properties and scheduled an afternoon where I’d look at them all. I was feeling more confident than ever— what are the odds that 10 out 10 places would suck?
High. The odds were high. All 10 places sucked in their own special way. One place had decently-sized bedrooms but several of the walls were damaged and the balcony offered a lovely view of a rusted-out roof and nothing else. Another was listed as a two-story corner penthouse unit, except the second ‘story’ was a snack-sized cubby only accessible via the worst spiral staircase mankind could hope to design. Two of the places located in the same complex had inexplicable layouts like a laundry room in the kitchen (take note of this) and a fireplace/built-in bookcase placed dead center in the living room. The last place we went to check out was much smaller than the rest with damaged and mismatching flooring, and it turned out to already have gone under contract!
Any of the properties not located on the first floor required taking dingy and unkempt elevators up followed by traversing through poorly-lit walkways. It was all too reminiscent of my time spent in college, and I wasn’t about to commit hundreds of thousands of dollars to relive those memories. I now understood why my friends had suggested I not look into West Campus. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with the area; it’s perfect for college students and I just happened to not be one anymore. The afternoon was a bust, but continue with the search I must.
Third time’s the charm?
I know I just did some sick rhyming about how I had to keep looking but I was starting to feel burned out. There are only so many times you can ride the carousel before you want to make one of the lifeless unblinking horses your own. I persisted nonetheless and soon came across two properties outside of West Campus that had been on the market for a few weeks. They looked pretty good so I set up back-to-back viewings, determined to fall in love with at least one of them. As I pulled up to the first one and stepped out of my car, a woman out on a walk stopped dead in her tracks and stared me down. It would have been an ideal moment to greet her and introduce myself as a potential new neighbor, but I am not a nice person so I did not. What I did instead was take in the surroundings of the neighborhood; it was a community of townhouses in the Northwest Hills area and there were in fact hills. I was relieved to learn this was not a neighborhood of liars. There were enormous oak trees dotted throughout the area providing plenty of shade and they even had a tennis court I would never use! I wasn’t going to be living outside, though, so it all came down to the impressions of the actual townhouse.
The impressions were good, great even! I was greeted with an open dining area and living room along with a sliding glass door that provided direct access to the enclosed garage. That privacy and ease of parking almost sold me right there and then. I didn’t think a place with a garage would ever be within my budget! There was a guest bathroom right by the entrance that would be perfect when having guests over and a washer/dryer in the kitchen that would be perfect for situations where I accidentally spill pasta sauce on my shirt and would need it laundered immediately. Remember when I talked about one of the places in West Campus having this layout a few paragraphs ago and said you should take note? Well, pop quiz: is this a good layout?
This is not a good layout. The kitchen looked as old as the time-honored tradition of traffic and I didn’t like a single thing about it. The cabinets were old and creaky, the countertop was stupid (they can be stupid), and it was overall pretty cramped. Fortunately, my idea of fine dining is anything that didn’t come out of a microwave so the kitchen alone wouldn’t be a deal breaker. There was at the very least a pantry where I could store my groceries and deepest darkest regrets.
The unbroken deal continued to unbreak as I walked up the hardwood (👏) stairs to the second floor where I was greeted with even more hardwood flooring and zero carpet (👏). This townhouse had a dual master bedroom setup — the first room had a large bathroom and two closets, whereas the second room had a diminutive bathroom perfect for people whose definition of a bathroom is ‘tub and toilet’, an expansive walk in closet, and four six-foot windows through which you could stare at the people playing tennis outside and pretend they were your friends.
I had no idea why this place hadn’t sold yet — the kitchen left a lot to be desired, but apart from that I’m going to quote the hard-working paleontologists of the world and say the bones were good. I tempered my expectations and stayed equally excited for the second property since it could just as likely be my new home. The excitement came easily since it was much closer to the Hyde Park area I’d grown to know and love and it had been built in 2019.
Initial impressions upon arriving were not stellar. There wasn’t dedicated parking anywhere in the neighborhood. It took a while to find the property as it ended up being hidden just behind one of the nearby houses. There was an elevated wooden walkway that cut through the grass leading to the entrance which was pretty fun and cool and one with the Earth. The front porch had a welcome mat that read ‘this is our happy place’; I planned on quickly replacing the ‘our’ with ‘my’. As the front door swung open, I found myself falling in love all over again. Whereas the last place’s kitchen was old and ugly and wack and ick, this kitchen was new and hot and wow and now. The countertops were granite, there was a brand new stainless steel fridge and gas cooktop, and the sink was built into a separate island overlooking the living room area. This was the kind of setup I thought only existed in million dollar homes, and here it could be had for the paltry sum of $440,000! I eventually picked my jaw back up off the floor and entered the guest bathroom which featured easy circuit breaker panel access and washer/dryer hook ups.
Neat. This was an even worse location to have a washer and dryer but I guess everything can’t always be berries and cream. The hardwood stairs were of a decidedly lower quality than those of the townhouse. Honestly, all of the wood flooring seemed a bit cheap but I was willing to overlook it for the sake of that kitchen. The upstairs bathroom kept my enthusiasm high with granite shower walls and a beautiful countertop. The rest of the upstairs, though, kicked me back into a sobering reality. Both bedrooms were diminutive with closets just large enough for a single or married person to stand in. The listing said this was a two bathroom condo, but the lack of a shower downstairs meant it only had 1.5 baths. I planned on eventually having a roommate and there isn’t a kitchen in the world nice enough to get me to share a shower.
I started noticing some flaws as I looked at everything more closely. The walls were not what I’d consider expertly painted — there were actually paint containers strewn about downstairs. The floor to ceiling guardrails on the second floor were so poorly installed that I was able to move each of them with one finger. Worst of all, the kitchen, that lovely kitchen, had an enormous gap between the tile wall and the painted wall. My realtor was the one who noticed that flaw and pointed it out as sloppy work. I had no choice but to agree. Whereas I initially considered the build year a benefit, I now saw it as a clear indicator of corners being cut for the sake of time and meeting a price point. I walked out and made my way down the wooden walkway knowing it would be the last time I would do so.
Make ’em an offer they can refuse (it is a free market)
The disappointment of the last property meant I could now devote all of my emotional energy into the townhouse. I wanted it and I wanted it bad. A potential buyer had recently expressed interest but never followed through with an offer. I would be more than happy to pick back up where they left off. The seller’s documents were thorough and didn’t indicate any current or potential future issues with the property. Best of all, there had been a recent $10k price cut which meant I had to act fast before another round of buyers smelled the blood in the water. My realtor suggested I submit a lower offer since the seller was looking to get the property off his hands. He wanted a fast sale and I was the speediest hedgehog in the south. The offer was sent off and we were left wondering what would happen next.
We wondered for only a few hours. The seller quickly responded with a counteroffer that was thousands of dollars below the already reduced asking price. Was I dreaming? It was too good to be true; surely someone would throw an absolute whale of an offer into this man’s swimming pool and make me look like a fool. Regardless, I quickly said yes to the counteroffer just before heading to the gym, patiently waiting some bad news.
The bad news never came. Midway into my warmup routine, I got this text.
My heart started to race and I immediately felt nauseous. This was the message I’d been working towards for months, but deep down inside I never thought it would actually happen with the odds stacked against me. Yet here I was, going under contract on an otherwise ordinary Wednesday evening. I don’t remember how that workout went, but I do remember telling my friends at the gym the good news. I also remember developing an eye twitch that night, a side effect of the unprecedented levels of stress that would follow me for weeks to come.
Under Pressure (and contract)
The seller wanted to close in three weeks’ time which seemed ambitious but doable. I hit the ground running, wiring the earnest money and option fee the very next morning and scheduling an inspection for that afternoon. The inspector got the job done in record time and was thorough in running through his findings with me when I arrived. There were a few things I’d have to get the seller pay to have fixed prior to closing, namely several thousand dollars in electrical and plumbing work. All of the windows were single-pane and poorly sealed, but there was a chance I could push for that to be taken care of as well. Unfortunately, the next item was going to fall under my responsibility. The HVAC system was undersized for the home and already at the end of its serviceable life. I disliked the idea of an ineffective system making me uncomfortable in my own home and I outright hated the idea of that system giving up entirely during the Texas summer. The provided estimate for a new HVAC system was a cool $20,000. I could have used that money to park a brand new Honda Civic in my attic but I’d instead have to spend it on some nerds obsessed with controlling the weather.
My realtor got the list of requested fixes written up and sent off, and I’m fully aware of how absurd that sounds given the current market. Buyers usually have to consider any findings from the inspection an addition to the purchase price, and here I was asking the seller to open up his wallet after he’d already made me a great deal. How did I have the audacity? Simple: we weren’t, and still aren’t, friends. Our relationship stemmed from the fact that he had something I wanted and my lender had a whole lot of something he wanted. This was a business transaction and nothing more. If he wanted to close quickly, I had no problem in making demands of my own. The repairs were a drop in the bucket compared to the six-figure payday he was looking at.
He responded within a day, agreeing to pay for the electrical and plumbing work along with a few other minor issues but refusing to cover the window replacement. Fair enough. With that settled, we were on to the next contingency, the appraisal. This is where the nerves really started to get to me. In what has upsettingly become standard fashion, most buyers are signing inspection and appraisal waivers that forfeit their earnest money, 1%-3% of the sale price, if major issues found during inspection or a low appraisal value forces them to back out of the deal. Although I didn’t sign an inspection waiver, which is the only reason I had leverage to push for repairs in the first place, I did have to sign an appraisal waiver as part of my offer per the seller’s request. Like I said, this was a business transaction, one where I risked losing nearly $5,000 along with my mental well-being if the appraisal came up short. Fortunately, the odds were in my favor since I was paying less than the initial asking price and the comparable sales data in Austin had started to catch up after the initial boom in 2020. I quickly paid the $500 appraisal fee and waited to hear back with a scheduled appraisal date.
Two weeks went by without a word from the appraisal company, which gave my brain plenty of time to think of worst-case scenarios and shove them into every waking and sleeping moment. The radio silence was making me physically sick and the compounding stress sent my new eye twitch into overdrive. If that wasn’t bad enough, the delay also pushed the closing date back a week since a ton of required paperwork couldn’t be done until the appraisal contingency was satisfied. I’m not exaggerating when I say this was the most miserable time of my life, and I’ve been a fraternity pledge. My mortgage broker, real name Charles, and coincidentally also my fraternity brother, eventually heard back from the appraisal company and relayed some delightful news to me. 🎵they were 🎵 backed up for weeks 🎵 and wouldn’t be able to appraise the property 🎵 in time for closing unless I paid another 🎵$1,500 🎵 for an expedited service 🎵.
F i n e. Charge my card I don’t care spend my money what even is money at this point it’s just made up numbers nothing exists. I was emotionally spent and wanted the process to come to an end one way or another. The next few days were uneventful as I went about my business and pretended I wasn’t buying a house. Another Wednesday night found me at the gym doing my thing when my thing happened to thing. More specifically, my phone started to ring. It was Charles. I answered the call.
“Hello?”
“Hey man, I just got the appraisal report. Guess what the property appraised at”
“$437,000” (the sales price)
“Nope”
“$438,000” (my ambition knows no limits)
“No”
“Tell me” (wake me up inside)
“$476,000”
Someone must have forgotten to keep the gravity on in the building because I suddenly found myself levitating. Through a combination of decent strategy and incredible luck, I’d pulled off a three-peat of impossibilities: I got an offer accepted on my third attempt, I paid under asking price, AND I got $39,000 of free equity thanks to a stellar appraisal. After a few seconds of silence, I asked for a quadruple confirmation of the number before expressing my gratitude for the update. Just like the last time my phone delivered real estate related delight at the gym (it’s weird how that happened twice isn’t it?), I only remember telling my friends the good news. All of the required contingencies had been satisfied and the only thing left to do was open my wallet.
Closing Costs (a lot)
I hope I’m never as excited to be allowed to give a company all of my money as I was during the final stretch of this process. The closing date was two weeks away and all I had to do in the meantime was purchase homeowner’s insurance and send over my bank account statements to verify I wasn’t suddenly spending or receiving large sums of cash. There were only two only missing pieces of the puzzle: the closing disclosure (CD) and the clear to close. The disclosure is a statement of the final loan terms and closing costs and the clear to close means that the lender has signed off on the loan. The CD is typically required to be provided within 3 days of the closing date to give the buyer enough time to check for discrepancies. While the lender was working on all of that, I just kind of existed and waited for that fateful Friday where I’d be finalizing my future with funds. As long as I got all of the information by Wednesday morning, we’d be as good as meatballs in gravy!
The meatballs were bone dry on Wednesday morning. I wasn’t concerned per se but I did find myself refreshing my inbox every minute. Charles assured me that everything was being worked on. Radio silence at this point would have driven me to madness, but diet madness was sounding awfully appealing when Thursday afternoon came around without so much as a peep. My productivity at work at this time wasn’t anything to admire. I resolved to keep calm and carry on and trust that everything would work out in due time.
Turns out due time was 4:34 PM when this spicy little number hit my line:
I got the clear to close with less than 24 hours to spare! Wonderful news! The closing disclosure wasn’t ready but that was apparently not a problem. Neutral news! I melted into a puddle of relief for the evening and threw back enough melatonin to take down an elephant in an effort to get a full night’s rest. Coincidentally, my best friend had just flown into town to celebrate the occasion with me and I volunteered to sleep on the couch instead of in my own bed because I’m such a good host. The apartment complex-provided couch was perfectly sized for large children and stiff enough to ensure no snack-sized strangers would be having a snooze. That is to say, I slept like shit. Four hours at most. Sleep is for the weak anyway, adrenaline would see me through to the finish line the following day.
Signed, sealed, and delivered(?)
Friday morning had never felt better. I had taken the day off of work and Charles was coming down to Austin to drive me to the bank and closing office, as well as to commemorate the big day with a night out. I spent most of the morning pacing around the apartment and checking the wire transfer information over and over again until a Texas-sized truck carrying a Texas-sized man pulled up and welcomed me with a Texas-sized handshake. We’d all worked up a Texas-sized appetite so we hopped in the truck and drove 50 feet across the street to Freebirds World Burrito. What’s another 15 dollars on a five-figure spending day?
I was fully immersed in my burrito bowl while Charles was just as immersed in his phone because the closing disclosure still wasn’t finalized. My bank appointment was in about an hour, so to say this was cutting it close would be an understatement. There was nothing I could do to help, so I continued eating as just under a dozen emails were sent to and from the lender and title company in rapid succession. Keeping in the spirit of flying by the seat of my pants, the final CD was sent out 14 minutes before the bank appointment. You couldn’t write up a more thrilling conclusion to this saga if you tried.
Charles carved that truck through traffic like I carve through family-sized bags of chips. We made it to the bank with two minutes to spare, just enough time for me to run inside and catch my breath so I’d look like I was there to send money instead of take it. The banker I worked with was incredibly cordial and made the entire appointment feel like I was hanging out with an old friend who would be withdrawing large sums of cash on my behalf. Speaking of cash, let’s talk about the dollars and cents disclosed in the CD.
I’ve always been transparent when discussing my relationship with money, from my battles with personal debt to the progression of my income, so I have no problem sharing the financial details surrounding this purchase. You’ll notice that the estimated total monthly payment is a substantial number, and that’s before the HOA fees. Once you factor those in, I’m paying a little over $3,000 a month. I say and show this to illustrate how expensive owning a place in Austin has gotten. I’m fortunate to be in the position to where I can afford the monthly payment, but I also had everything go right from offer to appraisal. The slightest hiccup could have sent me right back to square one, which is the position countless Austinites have been in for months or even years now. The goal post keeps getting moved back, the barrier to entry only grows taller. Whereas a $450,000 budget would have been generous five years ago given the median sales price of $330,000 at the time, it has become borderline inadequate in 2022 with the median having jumped up to $560,000. Hopeful buyers have little choice but to start their search in the outskirts of the city, and even that will prove to be ineffective before long.
Sorry, I had to spend a minute up on my soapbox. I was already aware of the monthly payments by this point, leaving the cash to close as the only unknown variable. I’d been quoted anywhere between $20,000 and $40,000 when I first went under contract. The second number assumed a higher down payment and worst-case scenario for all of the various closing costs. Luckily, my debt to income ratio allowed me to make a smaller down payment and the closing costs were much more reasonable than expected. To make things even better, the seller had given me a $1,000 credit towards some miscellaneous repairs and my realtor credited me $450 as a housewarming gift. Once the dust had settled, the big bad number I had grown to fear shrunk down to just over $20,500. Good fortune had kissed me on the forehead one last time and all of the parties involved in the sale were shocked that the number was so low. I happily wired the sum to the title company, and before long we were on our way to the title company’s office. Though there was an option to sign the documents from home with a notary, I wanted the traditional closing experience and by that I mean I wanted to take a picture with a giant cardboard key.
Once at the closing office, we were ushered into a separate room and I was presented with a stack of documents that were just yearning for my signature. While I scribbled something resembling my name a few dozen times, everyone else discussed their upcoming real estate dealings. My experience of a lifetime was their typical Friday afternoon, which is wild to think about. After half an hour of signing, all of the stress melted away as the last i had been dotted and the last t had been crossed.
The moment I had been waiting months for was at hand.
Big key picture taking time.
I did it! I closed on my first house! It was all mine and I had the whole weekend to get acquainted with it! All that remained was to collect my keys.
Yeah so it turned out I wouldn’t be getting the keys just yet since the seller lived out of state and didn’t sign his documents until after the wire transfer cut off time. I suppose I was finally due for a bout of bad luck, so I got drunk and did some people watching that night to make up for it. The weekend crawled by and Monday morning mercifully graced my inbox with an email from the title company containing the final master statement.
I did it! I closed on my first house! It was all mine, for real this time. I went to collect the keys from the lockbox during my lunch break and the rest is history. I’ve lived here for a little over six months now and every day is an affirmation that the grueling process was totally worth it.
Wrapping up
If this journey was a sandwich, I only ended up enjoying the bread. Looking at homes and getting the keys was a blast — everything in between was damp lettuce. Things would have likely been more pleasant if I had gotten started pre-pandemic, but living in the present is better than thinking about the past.
What would I suggest to prospective buyers? If you have a wheelbarrow of cash to burn, offering well above asking price will probably work just fine unless someone shows up with a bigger wheelbarrow. Otherwise, I advise going against the grain in your respective market. If a property has been listed for longer than average, check it out to see whether it’s a lost cause or a potential deal. If buyers are focusing on specific areas in the city, try focusing on…not those areas. I’d also look into local lenders — I used HomeTown Lenders and the lengths they went to in order to get my deal get finalized at the eleventh hour won them a customer for life.
Keep in mind that I’m speaking from the perspective of a first-time homebuyer and not a real estate professional, so these words may hold no weight for your situation. For all I know, your local lenders are terrible and glorified sheds in your city sell for six figures. What I can suggest to you all either way is to be unshakeable in your persistence to see things through to a happy ending. It’s not a fun answer but at least it’s an honest one. Your house search is only unsuccessful once you decide it’s over.
I wish you the best of luck in getting your big key picture moment. Thanks for reading.
