Tale of a First-Time Home Buyer: House Hunting Begins

I am a first-time home buyer and this is my Tale. It all began with our (my and my wife's) decision to buy our first home, then we checked out the Money Matters, and now the house hunting begins. Read all about our first day out below.

House Hunting Begins

I was actually nervous, like I was back in college about to take a test I didn’t study for. We were sitting in Starbucks in South Riding, 15 minutes early, waiting for Gene to show us what we were going to spend all our money on. He arrived on time, I introduced him to my wife, and we jumped into his car for a tour of the area.

The first thing I noticed is that everything was so new. To me, that means expensive, to my wife, that means we found our future neighborhood. Gene broke it down: we would look at a combination of re-sales and newly built townhouses. “Newly built? Yeah right, like we can afford a new house!” My mind screamed, but I kept it to myself.

The second thing I noticed was the obvious planning that went into the neighborhood. Some areas just grow uncontrollably as they sprawl over a larger and larger area and traffic can become a problem. South Riding already has wide streets, and after looking at a few maps of the area, it seems to be built with a plan in mind. I also noticed it was a self-sustaining neighborhood, with three grocery stores, gyms, restaurants, doctors, lawyers, and even three or four schools. There were running trails everywhere, basketball courts, tot lots, pools, everything a well-planned neighborhood should have. We would never have to leave the neighborhood for anything.

The first house we looked at was a model home. The house for sale had not even been built yet. Of course the model was amazing. It had every single option, which of course skyrocketed the price well into the $400,000s. My wife fell in love instantly. I became skeptical instantly. Even the base model, with no options, was out of our (my) price range. On to the next one.

The next house was a re-sale that had been on the market for quite a while, and as a result, the price had been recently reduced. Sure, it was nice, but did we want to buy it? No.

And so it went. We looked at three other model homes for new construction, all of which were just too expensive. We also looked at two other re-sales, both of which we couldn’t see ourselves living in. In my mind, the re-sales were all re-sales for a reason.

The major conclusions we came to after this first go-round were three-fold: First, if we wanted to find a re-sale we liked for the right price, we would have to find it the day it came onto the market, because the next day it would be gone. All the good ones go that fast, and only the ones that nobody wanted stayed on the market for any length of time. Second, if we wanted a brand new home, we’re looking in the wrong area, because all of the new homes were too expensive. And finally, we discovered that home shopping was extremely exciting, that our appetites had been whetted, and we were hungry to see more.