A different part of the Christmas “to-do” list

After several months, it’s finally done. It has been a long, curious journey, and while I don’t think I overly disliked any particular aspect of it, I have to say that I hope that I don’t have to go through it again any time soon. Because the process of purchasing a house is an experience quite unlike any other I’ve had, and while there are good and bad parts of it, it is a largely exhaustive process. Luckily, I had some great teammates along the way to make things infinitely easier than they could have been.

Now, I can’t say if our experience is in any way typical of the current state of affairs in the home purchasing market, but what I can say is that I found several aspects of the process to be…well, not necessarily bad, but…I guess “interesting” would be the best way to describe it.

For example, something that struck me after the fact is that, given the current state of the housing market, our decision on whether or not to put in an offer on a home would generally have to be a relatively quick one. With how quickly offers would be accepted, waiting around was generally not an option. We put in an offer on the house we just closed on the day it came on the market.

Maybe this is just my naivety in this realm coming out, but…isn’t that fast? Purchasing a home is, for a lot of people, the biggest financial decision they will make and will have countless effects on one’s life outside of monetary ones. But it’s almost like it is expected that you make a snap decision.

Which is definitely outside of my comfort zone. I’m definitely someone who pains over even relatively unimportant decisions, preferring to take my time and make sure I’ve analyzed everything before coming to a final conclusion. Even if I’m relatively certain on what I want, I generally like to mull things over for a time, just to make sure I’m not missing something important. So for me, taking the plunge on something like this was a bit disorienting. I feel like I’ve spent more time debating over whether or not I should buy a PS4 than I spent thinking over our home, which is equal parts laughable and scary.

There is also a good bit of “hurry up and wait” to the process, which is certainly not my favorite. We’d go a week without seeing any houses we liked in the area, only for one to pop up and needing to change our whole schedules just so we could try to see it as soon as possible. Signatures on certain documents need to be done the day they were sent to us, but then we would wait for days for any further word on what we needed to do next. It was an odd juxtaposition of needing to get things done as quickly as possible, only to then spend the next few days in neutral, a state of standby that isn’t particularly good for my want to separate work and free time or Mikaela’s planning nature. I think part of this was because there was such a long time between our offer being accepted and when we closed, but it still struck me as something “interesting.”

But as of last Thursday, all of that is in the rearview mirror. And while I’ve mostly brought up some of the less fun parts of the process, there were certainly enjoyable ones along the way as well. Hanging out with Mikaela, looking through houses online, talking about what we liked or not and pointing out some of the more “interesting” choices people had made with layout, design or function. Going to showings with my parents and our realtor and seeing some of those “interesting” choices in person. Developing an idea of what we were looking for over time and eventually finding something that fit those boxes and then some. There were certainly some good experiences that one typically only experiences a few times in one’s life, and for the first time only once.

But as I said at the start, I’m mostly just relieved to have checked that particular bit off our to-do list.

For better or worse, that also means that a whole host of new items have been added to said list, largely thanks to the power of the Internet in general and Pinterest more specifically. Walls to be painted, cabinets to be refinished, etc, etc. Mikaela is loving it. I’m just going to say that I find it, for lack of a better word, “interesting” and leave it at that.

A C ertain Point of V iew