Virtual Estate? Not Quite Yet
When we first learned that we were going to have a baby, we thought about renting a house. Eventually we came to our senses and realized that moving plus becoming parents was one more life-altering even than we were equipped to handle and decided to stick out the apartment one more year. This had another benefit, because when the next year rolled around, we were in a position to eschew renting and purchase a home of our own.
Now, let me make something clear from the start. I’m not one of those people who think that renting is ‘throwing away money.’ I can see a lot of circumstances where renting just makes more sense – you don’t need a lot of space, you don’t want to be tied to an area, you don’t want to worry about the maintenance, you’d like to take the money you save on a mortgage, property taxes and so on and invest in some other fashion, whatever. But we had reached a point where we wanted to have a little more sense of permanence and stability along with additional space, so for us, buying seemed the way to go. And being the 21st-century couple that we are, we wanted to use the Net and modern technology as much as possible. A pity it didn’t quite work out that way.
We tried to start early to get a sense of what the real estate market in our area was like. For that, the net was extremely helpful. Sites like HomeRadar.com consolidate information on recent home sales in a particular area, so we could see what homes in our neighborhood had actually sold for, rather than what the asking price was. (Granted, we had no idea what the specific details of these houses were, but it gave us a good ballpark about neighborhood and house size.) Plus, many real estate brokers have made the information that previously existed only on proprietary multiple listing services (MLS) available on the web. Usually there’s a slight delay between the realtors getting the listing and it showing up on the free sites, but for research purposes that’s not much of a problem. Every week we would hit Realtor.com, where we had saved a set of customized search parameters, and see what had been newly listed and what still hadn’t sold (indicating either a problem with the property, or simply a too-high asking price)d. From there we could request more information on specific properties from the real estate agents that listed them via e-mail, or go to the agent’s own website, or call. Once in contact with the agents, they could set up viewings of the house and let us know what other properties they might have available.
This is where the Net ran into its first hitch. The things we were seeing as a result of our Net searches were often nice, but always a little bit off somehow. Either they were too expensive, or were missing a vital feature, or needed a little bit too much touching up. Pretty much by definition, the houses on the realtor listing services are, well, houses listed by realtors, which means that the asking prices on the house anticipates the realtor’s commission. Houses that are For Sale by Owner – in which the seller is usually willing to pass along some of the savings from not using a realtor – are a little harder to find. We consulted newspaper listings, both the citywide listings in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the local listings in our neighborhood community paper. (And while I know that the Inquirer puts its listings online, its search engine was so clunky it was easier for me to just look at the paper each week.) We followed signs that sellers put up on nearby intersections. We even relied on word of mouth, which is how we eventually found the house we wanted to buy. How low-tech, huh?
Of course, once we found the house we wanted, there was the process of actually getting it. We had used the Net to check our credit ratings at the three important credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax, and Trans Union, and were relieved to discover they were free of errors. From there we followed one consistent piece of advice and got ourselves pre-approval for a mortgage – which meant that mortgage provider reviewed and approved our finances as being able to support a loan up to a particular amount before we even went to bid. The actual approval wouldn’t happen until the mortgage provider approved the property itself, but the pre-approval meant that we could assure sellers that we could meet the bid we would offer.
(Pre-approval is different than pre-qualification, which doesn’t look at your specific finances. If you use one of the many online mortgage calculators, such as on Quicken.com or Fannie Mae’s website, you’re essentially pre-qualifying. Since my grad school status has made our finances a little on the peculiar side, I wanted to be sure we had the extra certainty of a pre-approval.)
Again, we wanted to try and use the Web to get pre-approved, but my credit union doesn’t let you apply for pre-approval online – only the actual mortgage. As we browsed some more, we found that to be a pretty consistent result. So our hunt for a mortgage provider once again relied mainly on word of mouth and making a few phone calls. In the end, we found a mortgage company that has a very good reputation in the area. They were able to get us into a first-time homeowners’ program sponsored by Pennsylvania that offered a reduced interest rate – which was a lucky break for us, because as luck would have it, we had to make our application the week that hostilities began in Iraq, which shot conventional mortgage rates up a considerable amount. The state program saved us a tremendous amount of money, and I heartily advise anyone who can to look into and take advantage of such programs.
The mortgage provider was also very helpful in getting through the one hurdle that came from us doing the transaction as a For Sale by Owner. There was no realtor to act as a go-between and walk everyone through the process, so sometimes we’d be a little unsure who was supposed to fill out which form or who needed to call the guy for the termite inspection. So we relied on the mortgage folks for guidance and for referrals on things like homeowner’s insurance. I did consult a few sites for background information, but in the end there’s no way to get through all the little details without someone around who’s gone through them all.
So when all was said and done, the Net helped us with some valuable support, but the heavy work was still handled the old-fashioned way. But whatever we did, it worked. Our bid was accepted, we started packing, and before we knew it, we had reached the closing date. We sat in a room, Pattie signed a great many pieces of paper, and all of a sudden we were homeowners.
From there the adventure really began. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.