The yellow brick road to home ownership
R. Eric Thomas described the various characters involved in buying or selling a home perfectly.
Buying a home, in my experience, is like a Wizard of Oz adventure where every new person you deal with on your journey is operating at a wildly different frequency. Showing Agents, for instance, are like salespeople at Sephora. Charming! Fun! Will compliment your sweater and give you a tip on making a smokey eye. They want you to like the house but ultimately, babe, who cares?
Buyers Agents always have a million calls going and they say things like "roof decks are trending downward." And I nod and I say, "yes, I have read some articles of the sort," even though I haven't. Every time I talk to a Buyers Agent I feel like I need to go home and google "Now what exactly is going on?" (A thing I frequently google for many reasons.)
My favorite personality in the home buying process is the mortgage person. Now that is a kook! First of all, who are you? Everything about buying a home feels like a scam but it definitely starts feeling like a scam when you email your W-2s to a stranger who has a magic program that will show you how poor you are in graph form.
My actual mortgage guy was great but wow was I not prepared for this part of Oz. He works all the time? Like 24 hours a day? I asked him a question on the weekend as we were preparing to make an offer and he sent me a response via video message at a birthday party for a child. (It wasn't confidential information.) To this day, I don't really understand what this job is or how one comes to be in it. It feels like going on the Dark Web or meeting someone at a party who says he's a Day Trader. Okay, well I'm a Night Walker. Now what?
My other favorite person in the home-buying process is the Title person. Her name is always Shannon and she's either 52 or 21 and she lives in New Jersey no matter where you buy your house. You will never meet her and when you talk to her on the phone, the room has the vague sound of dusty cubicles in a mostly empty office. Shannon is the person who sends you the serial killer letter that has instructions about how to wire more money than you have ever laid your little fingers on.
Anyways, I rent.