It’s been a while since I last wrote about my home search. Since then, my boyfriend has officially moved in (with all his stuff), and we’ve come to realize exactly how much we hate our apartment.
With four cats, one very tall man (he’s 7-feet-2-inches tall) and me with my accessibility needs (I’m a wheelchair user), our two-bedroom, one-bath is simply too small to be livable. Oh, and did I mention we are expecting a baby in March?
We have officially become motivated buyers. We are part of that 12 percent of unmarried millennials looking to buy a home together.
Our requirements
We need a house with enough height to fulfill his physical needs and enough space to fulfill my wheelchair needs — plus a basement to store all our stuff from our apartment and our storage locker. And it probably should be a one-story home in a kid-friendly area, not too far from family.
My boyfriend and I have very different ways of going about this, though. He enjoys scouring Zillow for listings and new construction and learning the market in the various towns near family.
I’m opposed to that because I don’t want to fall in love with something only to find out that we can’t afford it. (We haven’t quite gotten pre-qualified yet, though we are working on it.)
The perfect listing?
But alas, it happened. He finally sent me a listing we both fell in love with. It’s an old church that has been rehabbed into a beautiful living space, perfect for a growing family.
But the entire process is overwhelming on top of trying to get through a high-risk pregnancy. We both work full-time, and any time taken off of work is spent at doctors’ appointments and trying to get ready for the baby.
What we could really use is a real estate agent to guide us through this daunting process in a very stressful time — starting with financials and credit.
However, despite reaching out to the listing agent on that beautiful church home several times, we never heard back from her and have basically talked ourselves out of that particular home.
We still need a place in early spring. So here are my suggestions on what would have been nice in this process, and what a savvy agent could easily do to win our business:
- Call us back; even if your listing isn’t for us, maybe you have one that is.
- Don’t worry that we aren’t qualified — it’s because we need advice on the process.
- Take time to meet with us face-to-face.
- Refer us to a patient lender, preferably with later business hours.
- Send us listings that fit our needs, which means you have to know our needs inside and out.
- Be available.
- Offer us resources — first-time buyer classes on the evening or weekend would be ever so helpful.
I realize that these are pretty basic suggestions. However, it’s not happening for us.
Maybe these tips will help you snag that millennial buyer who doesn’t DIY every detail of his or her life — me.