Buying and selling a house during a Pandemic
I am not a financial advisor or realtor. This blog is solely based on my experience, and if you need advice please speak to an expert. I know some people are debating on making the same decisions as I did, and I hope this blog helps.
I know that is a blessing to live in a state that I can afford to buy and sell a house. I will admit to being a Dave Ramsey follower and it has helped me evolve from a broke first year teacher with too much student loan debt to a not so broke veteran teacher. However, waiting to be debt free to buy a house was not the right decision for my family. It was cheaper to pay a mortgage even with $4,000 of repairs each year than to rent an apartment for a family of four (multi-generation living blog will come someday). My husband and I bought our first house knowing it was not our forever home. Once a year I would check the house market to see how my neighborhood was doing. When my husband and I began to get serious at selling, we looked at prices weekly. Why did we choose to buy a newer house with a bigger mortgage payment during a pandemic? It would help me reach my goal of being debt- free (besides house and car) and have more money saved. We were also in a good position of not having to sell our house. If for some reason our house didn’t sell, we would be fine.
Can I be real? The biggest issue other than safety is the patience you will need in buying a house. Buying a house is a huge financial decision, and it shouldn’t destroy your relationship if you are buying with some else. Your relationship with your partner needs to be strong to handle all the paper work , phone calls, and emails you will receive. It is extremely important you have a good mortgage company and realtor. I absolutely loved my realtor and he made the process easier. My husband and I were not the easiest of clients, but he worked with us. The price and budget is something we agreed on easily, but I like things my way. My husband was not a fan of our first house, and I wanted to make sure he liked the second one. Our first house was never intended to be our forever home, and I wanted to make sure the next house could be (I have an issue with commitment when it comes to places and things).
The first step in our process was getting approved by the mortgage company. We keep all our financial documents in the same place as our house documents so it was an easy process when they asked for documents. I highly suggest you keep all your house documents in the same place in your house. When my realtor asked for the land survey it was easy to find it. Whether you are a first time buyer or a second time buyer, keeping your documents organized is helpful.
The second step was to begin the process of getting the house ready to sell. We donated and threw away as much as possible. We paid a junk removal service to remove large items. Since I was working at home during the whole process, it was easier to pack than it would be during a normal school year. I don’t believe in paying for boxes. Call your local grocery store and ask for boxes. The only thing I purchased was packing tape, paper towels for glassware, and bubble wrap. The one tip I have that I haven’t seen on other blogs is have a blow dryer handy. It is a no mess guarantee to remove so many items. We used Velcro to keep our rugs down, and the blow dryer came in handy in removing the Velcro from laminate floor. There is no need to destroy your paint when taking down command strips that may or may not have been put on properly. Use that blow dryer! I don’t know how teachers would attempt to do this during the school year. Be realistic about how much time it will take you to get your house ready to meet with a realtor.
We relied on our realtor for the pricing of our house because he had sold a house in our neighborhood before and we followed his advice on making our house ready. We took all our personal items and put them in the garage instead of paying for storage. This is an easy way to save money because you will need repairs and a moving company. (I highly recommend using a moving company. Once you are over 30 everyone’s back hurts and in my area it is relatively cheap to have movers only move your large furniture. ) We also did some paint touch ups. Unfortunately matching paint was impossible and it didn’t quite match. It didn’t hurt the sell of our house. Lastly, we did a heavy deep cleaning that took several days before professional pictures were taken. We had good traffic in our open houses so a clean house with good pictures is a must.
How did we handle open houses with COVID? We required masks and provided hand sanitizer for all who entered our house. Lysol was sprayed in the whole house when we returned home. Some houses we visited required us to cover our shoes and we tended to avoid open houses with multiple families in the house at the same time. Honestly, dealing with the dogs was the most difficult thing about the process. Thankfully I could take the dogs to my husband’s workplace. My dogs do not use the restroom in the house, and thankfully my dogs poop away from the back porch so it wasn’t an issue for potential buyers. Our lawn service happens every two weeks and dog poop is cleaned then. I would not have considered even going trough the whole process if there were any members in my house high risk for death or hospitalizations.
How was the process? Make sure you advocate for yourself in the negotiation process. Our first buyer did not want to give us enough time to move out of the house. We knew we would need time to move out and have the house cleaned, and without finding our house first we couldn’t commit to a specific date that was too soon. That didn’t work out so we had to have more open houses. The buyer who bought our house was willing to do a lease agreement after we closed so we would have enough time to move in. You will read later why that was so important. We also paid for a maid to clean up our house after we left. We have two dogs and all our furniture hides their hair. After packing and unpacking in our house the last thing I wanted to do was deep clean the old house. It was one of the best decisions in the whole process I made. We had some major bumps along the way, but my husband and I were on the phone immediately handling it. Patience is key in dealing with the process.
How did we find our new house? Let me be honest, I found our first house and I found our second house. I really feel being a history major allows me to enjoy the research process. I’m really picky, and I’m not the best at communicating at what I want to a realtor. My first experience with a realtor was horrible because she treated me like I was too poor to receive good service. My second realtor was amazing, but he had to deal with my unwillingness to commit. Our search came down to the last week because we had committed to our offer without putting an offer down. I sent my husband with the realtor to look at the last five houses I wanted to look at. My husband and I had a serious discussion on our top three houses After six years of constant repairs, my husband decided that the newer house made the best sense for us.
The second to last part of the process is the option period. All buyers and sellers have to agree on terms. Our buyer wanted a lot of repairs done but my husband and I weren’t willing to do all the repairs because we didn’t want to commit to repairs without specific numbers. We know that stuff breaks down and every dollar spend on our old house meant less money we would have improving our next house. After two days of going back and forth a compromise was made. My relator was able to find someone to do the required home repairs on our old house. As for the new house, the inspection company my realtor uses is very thorough and help us decide what repairs we wanted to ask for the sellers of our house. They agreed to our terms so we just had to wait to close.
We were able to close on our old house on a Thursday night and close on our new house on a Friday night which I highly recommend for a teacher. You will need a full weekend to just get everything in the new house. However, things didn’t go completely smoothly. The couple who sold our house cut off all the utilities on the day the sold the house to us. (We gave our buyer a week to convert everything just as the previous seller of our house gave us .) We packed the garage using my husband’s car lights that Friday night. At 8:05 Saturday, we had electricity because I scheduled it for Saturday. However, it was a holiday weekend so getting our water turned on was an issue. We showered at the old house until we could get the water turned on our new house ( paying for a lease back was worth every penny).
What are some other things to think about? People are scared for good reason to have people in their house. No one in my household is high risk of death for COVID so I was willing to take a small risk. It did effect the market. It was easier to sell our house at a price that was lower than the average house in our market than for others. Also, one house we were extremely interested in had an elderly home owner that put the house off the market after the sell didn’t go through. Secondly, be reasonable with your wants vs needs in a house. After months of being inside the house, many people were looking at having pools and those houses were extremely competitive. After six years in an older home, I knew all the houses with pools in our price range would require tons of repairs. It didn’t make sense to go over our budget. However, the interest rates are so low if you are ready to buy an house , it doesn’t make sense to let the pandemic stop you. It is also a great time to refinance your home. Talk to a professional and see if you are ready to buy and sell a house during a pandemic.
*If you have any more questions please comment below.
