Doing the Deed: One Woman Buys Her First Home

It was the smartest question I ever asked.

Either that, or the dumbest.      

I posed it to my realtor as we sat in my car on an early spring Sunday afternoon. Outside the passenger window, the gathering dusk turned the graceful old brick building whose qualities we’d been exhaustively dissecting dusty pink. Two hours earlier, I’d casually dropped into an Open House at a top-floor unit—mostly because the building was on the way to my favorite bagel shop.      

Now I was ready to buy the place on the spot.      

Probably …      

“Something’s bothering you,” my realtor said gently.

“What is it?”      

Searching for the right words, I finally blurted out, “It’s just … Is it really this easy?”      

She nodded. “When you find the right place, pretty much.”      

My gut instinct had been validated. Still, I was about to find out how much “pretty much” could add up to.      

I’d thought finding a home worthy of having me as its owner was the hardest thing I’d ever do (non-natural childbirth division). But if househunting had sometimes made me feel like a visitor in some strange land where broom closets counted as “cozy dens” and  “as is” was secret code for “run!” it all was merely a prelude.  Like anyone who’s ever actually signed (and signed and signed) on to home ownership, I was about to enter the Twilight Zone of red tape and real estate’s version of high-stakes poker. A place where nobody trusts you with your own money, let alone theirs, and you immediately begin speaking in tongues:     

“Earnest money, title search, termite letter.”  “Loan origination fee, homestead exemption, tax escrow.”  Fixed-rate mortgage or adjustable? Short closing date or long? Where’s last year’s W2, every pay stub going back a decade and that picture Mom and Dad took of me as a dancing zucchini in third grade to prove I’m not in the country illegally, I love vegetables and I have parents who’ll pay my mortgage if I die or, worse, default?