Step 1: Approach a lender to get pre-approved for a mortgage.
Step 2: Celebrate, because in your mind, you are rich. You can afford to buy an 18-bedroom castle and still have money left over for a giant slide made of rainbows and happiness.
Step 3: Using internet real estate listings, select the houses you’d like to tour.
Step 4: Drive all over town looking at properties. Just for fun, go ahead and get your hopes up for that first showing. It will help make things more dramatic as you look at houses…
On sink holes:
In alligator nests:
And behind prison yards:
Step 5: Realize that you can’t afford anything you’d even let a pack of wild dogs live in, and give up. Decide to live in a refrigerator box instead.
19 Responses to getting housed: what it’s like to buy your first place
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Did you really tour a house behind a prison? Was it super-quiet?
I’m slightly fascinated by the house in an alligator nest. Is that wrong?
Also? Now I want a rainbow-happiness slide.
Poor Kendall. Chin up! There are worse properties out there. Seriously, I am not just spouting a platitude. Remember the ones you chose not to look at because they didn’t sound promising? Well, they were horribly trumped up listings too. It’s just that even dressed up in horribly outrageous lies, they still didn’t appeal to you. Feel better now? You’re welcome!
My husband and I are going through THIS EXACT THING. I giggled at the “Also? I’m a liar.” note on the real estate listing site. SO TRUE.
Man, I love your stuff. The part that made me laugh out loud the most was that mean prisoner. Ha!
Right now in my life this is the most ‘freaking hilarious and so so true’ blog I’ve read in a while. One day I will own millions of monies and then millions of countries to hold all my trillions of houses… but until that day I will cry every time any rent/gas/electric bill comes in and wonder how the hell I’m going to keep living indoors for the rest of the month.
I have picked out a particularly amazing box with a crate of particularly amazing wine just in case. I like to be prepared for all eventualities.
I will take the double-wide refrigerator box that is two doors down from your refrigerator box.
Can I share your rainbow slide??
You just need to get some of the affordable upgrades on the refrigerator box and it will feel like home in no time. Trust me.
Yeah, it always does seem wonderful when you first get that cash. But in reality its like they have practically robbed you!
Once again you hit the nail on the head! Love it!
PS: Where do I get me a rainbow slide!!??? Its like THE best thing EVER!
You forgot the part where you call about that great online listing or yard sign and then never hear back from the agent listed on it.
I want a rainbow happiness slide too but will it fit in my refrigerator box?
I’m still mad about the house we bought in 1999. Yes. Still.
Worse than the lying realtors are the idiot homeowners who fancy themselves as D0-It-Yourselfers and so every. single. thing. in your house [that you paid a ridiculous amount of money for, even without the rainbow slide] is slightly off.
Good luck. I’d move in with HYP. She looks like she has a cute house.
Giving up already? Geez, have you even LOOKED at some nice double-wide trailers? I hear the trailer parks have really come a long way.
We’re figuring the only way we’ll ever own real estate is if we buy cemetery plots and plop a dog house on it.
I’ve written off any chance of ever getting on the property ladder. Thanks, recession. Also, written off any hope of getting on a regular ladder. Thanks, vertigo.
LOVE. IT. Because everytime I meet a new neighbor I have the same conversation:
Them: Did you buy *this* place?
Me: No, we’re renting.
Them: Oh, you didn’t….I hope you aren’t paying too much in rent.
I’m beginning to think there was a meth lab explosion or something here. Maybe a stack of dead bodies found in the basement. This is a really nice neighborhood, why is everyone so freaking weird about us renting this house?
How much do rainbow happiness slides cost, anyway?
[…] How to buy your first house […]
we bought our house last year and the previous moron…I mean homowner, was a DIYer…oh boy, the crap he did. Left live wires hanging out of walls and packed into the insulation of the attic…disconnected a/c thingies to the vents…and this is freaking central Florida! And he “re-wired” everything…an didn’t know what grounding meant…I’d like to ground him!…made a shower so big I could have the neighbors all over in it…but keep hitting my elbow on the window sill when I comb my hair b/c the rest of the bathroom is so small to make room for the giant shower….covered beautiful terrazzo floors w/ ugly boring builder grade beige tiles that always look grimy…the only good thing he did was stop paying for the house so we got it cheap!…not cheap enough to get a rainbowfuckingslide (or a pool)