My husband and I have been dreaming about owning a home from the day we moved into a Toronto apartment together five years ago. Last week, we finally took the plunge over a whirlwind 48 hours: We went to an open house on Sunday, found an agent on Monday, and made our first offer to date (along with five other bidders) on Tuesday evening.
While our home purchase happened faster than we'd imagined, we'd been preparing for it for years. We paid off debt, saved up a down payment and followed the market closely. Since we got married in July, my husband made studying MLS listings a full-time hobby. We used calculators to find out what kind of mortgage we could reasonably afford and all the extra cash we would need to cover closing costs. We were discouraged by the high prices of single-family homes but we kept our eyes peeled for houses that fit our basic wish list: two to three bedrooms, private backyard, quiet side street, decent kitchen. We're not very handy so no major fixer-uppers … beyond that we were pretty flexible.
In September, we started going to the odd open house when they fit our schedule and were easy to get to by public transit or bike. Most seemed too expensive and had major flaws.
A couple of weeks ago, we met with a mortgage broker and were preapproved, to be prepared if the right opportunity came up. Last Sunday, with my parents vacationing in Florida, we used their car to go to some open houses a little further afield. The first two were narrow and unappealing. But the third, a tastefully renovated three-bedroom semi with a finished basement, a great kitchen and a cute backyard, near St. Clair and Oakwood, had everything we were looking for. And the street was quiet and tree-lined. We were in love.
We went home that night feeling genuinely freaked out. Offers were Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. That left us with 48 hours. Were we ready to make an offer when we'd only seen a handful of houses? We didn't even have an agent. We decided to sleep on it.
The next morning, we hesitated. The agent at the open house had told us she was showing the home for a colleague and could present an offer for us. But we were nervous that she might try to ask us to sign a contract for several months and didn't want to be stuck with someone we didn't know if this house didn't work out.
So I asked a colleague for a referral and that evening we found ourselves at the office of an agent who agreed to let us sign a buyer's contract with an "easy exit" clause for just one week. Over almost three hours that evening, we got a crash course about our dream home's location, comparable sales, and all of the paperwork we needed to make an offer. Thanks to all of our reading, none of it was a surprise and we decided to go for it.
Because the list price was lower than recent sales in the neighbourhood, our agent said multiple offers were likely, and suggested we make our offer with no conditions.
Nervous and excited, we met our agent at the house that night. With five offers registered, we made what we thought was a good bid. From the car, we watched a series of agents go in and out of the house. Twenty minutes later, the listing agent called and told our agent he was giving everyone a chance to raise their offer once and let on that ours was the second highest.
We had heard about blind bidding from friends who had been involved in multiple bidding wars through years of house hunting, but now that we were in one ourselves the process felt crazy. What if someone had already offered a huge amount more than us? We were total rookies. We didn't want to lose the house over a few thousand dollars but we also didn't want to overpay.
My heart started pounding. Until that moment I had expected we would be hugely outbid and we'd chalk this night up to a learning experience. Now it actually felt real, like the house was within our reach.
Away from the agent, my husband and I conferred about how much we could raise our offer without stretching ourselves beyond our means. My husband is more conservative than I am and kept my wild excitement in check until we settled on a new price.
The next 15 minutes felt like an eternity as we watched agents enter and exit the house all over again. But as a couple began to drive away, our excitement built.
And then the call came. "Congratulations," we heard the listing agent say over the phone. Our mouths dropped. Twenty minutes later we had signed the paper work. We heard that our closing date, which was exactly what the seller had asked for, had helped push our offer to the top.
We know we were lucky, and that our research and prep work helped us feel ready to pounce when the right house became available. Good thing, too – I'm not sure I would have had the stomach to go through that again for quite a while.