Doing the Deed: One Woman Buys Her First Home

I can joke about it because it’s been almost a year. And because only now can I start thinking about something other than standing constant vigil at the fax machine.     

It’s a fiendishly brilliant scheme someone’s devised. Buying a home really boils down to a couple of essential questions: “Can you afford to pay us this amount each month? And if not, do you promise to do everything within the bounds of the law (or outside the bounds, we’re really not picky) to do it anyway?”     

But from the moment that sweet little shack with the Martha Stewart-shaped Jacuzzi in the butler’s pantry catches your eye, you’re not even thinking about that. You’re so busy faxing off the latest signed version of (I swear, I am not making this up) the “Agreement to Amend the Amendment to the Agreement to Purchase,” there’s no time to contemplate the enormity of what you’re about to do.       

My one bizarre twinge of “Buyers Remorse” was probably predictable, given my, uh, commitment issues. Fear—of financial ruin, of accidentally buying a place with dead bodies buried in the walls—had kept me renting for nearly twenty years. When my apartment building went condo, I finally started looking—then stopped after four miserable months.     

A year later, I decided to try again. Enter the fateful Open House. When the pokerfaced seller’s agent said she expected multiple bids, I could’ve folded. Instead, I upped the ante, offering a few thousand over the asking price. Two hours and some 117 faxes back-and-forth later, I’d won.     

Was the other side bluffing about the multiple offers, as some cynical friends suggested? Maybe. I know I was. I’d  have been willing to pay even more for this underpriced gem, something I concealed like an ace up my sleeve until my offer was accepted and neither side could back out.     

Or could I? It wasn’t any of the big stuff that nearly broke me: The mandatory inspection, which everyone had assured me would be a nightmare of previously undiscovered bad wiring and ready-to-blow plumbing? Piece of cake. The mortgage application process, where I constantly had to prove that the money I’d invested for years was really mine and not being laundered for the Sandanistas? De nada.