Domus Nova

domus nova means “new house” in Latin. And that’s really what this is about. My spouse and I started looking for houses in the start of August, were referred to excellent realtors by dear friends of ours, and started the process by meeting with said realtors. Then we started looking at listings online and trying to find something we would like. We told our realtors our general parameters and so they tailored listings to those, and sent them to us daily. thus the process started in early August, and we spoke with a lender about securing financing. My parents have said for years that they want to help us get into a house, so they planned on helping us with a down payment. and believe me, we wouldn’t get into a house without their help, not in a very very long time.

So we looked and looked. Spent weekends looking at houses, seeing what looked good, what we liked and disliked. It was an onerous and frustrating process in general. We put in an offer on one house, then got outbid by a cash offer, which of course we, with our relatively-limited resources, couldn’t compete with. No go. So back to the drawing board, looking at more stuff. And then we lit upon one house in particular, really loved it, thought it was great and wanted to go for it. We slept on it, took a day or so, and then decided to put in an offer on it. And, thank the gods above and below, the offer was accepted, no questions, even though we offered less than the listing price. Over time, as we worked through the contract process, we even got some more money knocked off due to repairs that were needed, and the sellers even fixed the furnace, which had some issues when the inspection results came back.

The process overall was pretty wild. We put in the offer and it was accepted at the end of August, and we were set to close a month later at the end of September. Which meant we needed to come up with “earnest money” to put down, a kind of pre-down payment, showing we were serious, and then the down payment itself. My parents were thankfully able to help with the down payment, which again, we wouldn’t have been able to scrape together unless we saved for many, many years. I am so grateful that they were able to help. There were a lot of moving parts involved, and lots of things to verify, but eventually, we requested the day off for closing, went down to the title company (the down payment money had been wired to them earlier that week), signed some papers, got the keys, and the house was ours. Kinda anticlimactic in some ways, but then the real work began. The timing worked out so that we closed about a month before we had to be out of our apartment, so that was a relief. We have to be out of the apartment on 05 November – tomorrow – and still have some stuff to do, but we’ll get it done; my spouse anticipates it’ll be about a half-day of work if we’re lucky.

Once we closed, we set a date with my mom for her to come out and help us move, at least the bulk of things. I ended up taking 4 days off from work, not only to get moving done, but also to spend time with my mom, since we hadn’t seen her for at least a year since we last visited. So she came out on a Friday and stayed through Tuesday, and it was really nice. We moved the bulk of our stuff (bed, couch, bookshelves, other furniture) on Saturday after she got here, then moved a few things piecemeal, and started setting up the household. We went from an 800 sq ft apartment to a 1300 sq ft house with a garage, so it definitely is a change. My mom helped us move some more stuff over, and we just hung out in general; it was really nice. And even though it was a “vacation,” it wasn’t really, since we spent most of it moving, so I was still a bit exhausted after my mom went home. Went back to work, started unpacking things here and there, and slowly worked on moving more things over. Then my spouse went out of town a week or two later, and I worked on moving some more stuff over myself, but it’s been a slow process.

It’s a strange experience being a homeowner. I’ve rented for so many years now (at least since I was about 21, so for almost 20 years) that it’s really a relief not to have to deal with a landlord. Like our payments are higher now, but they’re the same, locked in with the mortgage, and won’t randomly change (unless we re-fi, which should be a good change). And that’s incredibly stress-relieving. And we can do what we want with the place, remodel it, repair it, add things, whatever, and no one, within reason, can tell us otherwise. We have more room for our stuff – not that I want so much stuff, I want to get rid of more stuff – and more room for the cats to run around. I have an office to work in where I don’t have to take down my setup every evening and set it up again every morning. It’s just there and allowed to exist, and I can lock Xya or Ajax out if needed, no problem. And my spouse has their own space to work in, and we have space to do our thing. Working at home through the pandemic has been a challenge, especially in a one-bedroom apartment, and I think this will definitely improve things. Having a garage is a game-changer too for storage.

Another fun thing has been doing some simple things like changing locks. We were able to re-key a couple of locks with a Kwikset re-key set, but others I just replaced the doorknob on, and that was cool to learn about. I even installed some GFCI-protected outlets, which weren’t too bad to do. I bought a DIY book that I found out about on Mastodon and I think that’ll be really helpful here and there. I’m kinda excited to learn new stuff about taking care of a house and making it our own. And we have a backyard, with a big tree, a covered porch, and a shed! It’s wild.

I know homeownership isn’t for everyone, and some people like living with others communally, which is totally cool. I think that’s great and if people with common interests who get along well want to live together in a house, that’s awesome. But I think it’d be nice to see more people be able to own homes if they want to. It’s gotta become a more affordable option for people; landlords and renting are destroying people’s lives, jacking up rents randomly and erratically for no reason other than profits and capitalism. Like in our previous apartment, our rent raised on average about $50-100/year for no good reason. We weren’t getting any more services, they weren’t improving the property, but they were just asking for more money. And nickel-and-diming us with things like “valet trash” where you set a trash can out and someone comes by, picks it up, and drops it off in the dumpster. We didn’t need that and should have been able to opt out, but no. I totally see how it would be useful for people who have mobility issues or other issues preventing them from being able to get to the trash can, but for us, it was unwanted and unwarranted, and I didn’t appreciate having to pay $30-35/month extra for a service we didn’t want or need. So I don’t miss that, not at all.

It’s really frustrating to see people being preyed upon by landlords and other unsavory characters when all they want is a place to live, work, play, relax, and exist. No one should have to deal with that. People should be able to pay a fair rent for where they live, and not be gouged by horrible people just out to make a buck, people who don’t care about them, but only about their money. We were fortunate at our apartment; we were always able to pay and pay on time, despite it being ridiculously high rates, and just sorta dealt with it. But I’m sure there were people who suffered and weren’t able to pay, and even though they say they will work with people to help them if they’re struggling to pay, what does that actually mean? Are they actually helping people, or just letting them fall behind and eventually evicting them? I don’t know, but housing is a serious problem and I don’t know how to fix it, I wish I did.

In our area they keep building more and more student housing and apartments, and then some of it is luxury housing, and that’s not enough. People need places to live where it won’t take most of their income for the month, so they can do other things with their lives besides pay rent and fees and whatever other nonsense the complex and its owners drum up. I really disliked having to deal with that system, even though we escaped it fairly unscathed. We were fortunate. And again, we’re extremely fortunate that my parents were able to help us get into a house and out of that apartment situation. I really would rather pay monthly and gain equity; paying rent at an apartment felt like flushing money down the toilet. I wish more apartments were rent-to-own situations, or at least had that option; if people felt like they actually had an investment in where they lived, it would be much better. But capitalism. Capitalism doesn’t want that, all it wants is the bottom line and profit margins or whatever for apartments. I don’t know where I’m going with this, I just think it sucks and I wish there were more options for people to buy homes if they so desire. There are a lot of first-time-homebuyer options out there, and I think that’s great, but we need more options all the time. In my work I try to help people out with these sorts of things, but for housing I can only refer people, I can’t do anything directly, unfortunately.

In any case, ultimately we are really happy with our move and things are going well. Again, I feel very fortunate that we’re able to buy a house, make payments on it, and work towards paying it off down the road, and have a stable place to live. Extremely thankful for that and I don’t ever want to take it for granted.

Thanks for reading my rambly nonsense, friends. Much love to all of you.