The Search Continues to Begin

As I was reaching for the handle of the car door, Jon put his arms on the top of the car.

"We should make a movie of our search, so when we actually have a house, we can watch it and laugh and laugh and laugh! It's too bad we can't bring video cameras into these places".

No, we couldn't make a movie, but we could write blog.

But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.

So here's who we are: Vanessa and Jon, both newly 30, and, it would seem, destined to be eternal renters living in Toronto. I'm a teacher, and Jon's an engineer. We've been pre-approved for a mortgage for a little over a year now, which is when we started looking for a house.

It would seem, despite a rather healthy combined income, that we can't afford a starter house in Toronto.

Our story so far is that we've put offers in on 3 houses: the first in August of last year (2008), and the other two were made in the same week in June of this year (2009). Our first offer was rejected, with the seller walking away from all offers and taking the house off the market. We learned from a house we wanted to put an offer in on that we didn't have a chance, as we had a home inspection condition in our offer. Apparently, people are now doing home inspections prior to submitting an offer. When we heard the house went for $50,000 over asking, we realised we were in a much different market than we'd been in before. We both felt totally frustrated with the situation, and vowed we wouldn't be paying for a home inspection before we even knew if we had a chance at a house. It seemed insane to use that we would be using money we'd normally be saving to put towards the house just to try to get in the game.

I swore a lot. I cursed the bloody, selfish fools who first thought of the asinine idea of spending $400 on the effing home inspection before putting in an offer. Didn't they realise the precedent they were setting? Great for them for getting ahead, but didn't they think about everyone else they were screwing over?

The rantings of a mad woman, I realise.

This is what house hunting in Toronto does to you, though. It is not for the faint of heart.

I got off track.

Where was I?

Oh right. Home inspections. So we knew a little bit more now, though, and when we saw a house we thought was cute, we sucked it up and shelled out. We became one of "them": those self-centered asses who would do anything to screw everyone else for the sake of a house. I felt so smug as we sat there, discussing the result of the home inspection with the inspector as another couple looked around the house with their agent.

We were so far ahead.

Right?

Wrong. Our offer was clean, but we couldn't afford the house at $50,000 more than asking, which is what it ended up going for.

The last house we put an offer in on is still too painful to talk about. Maybe we'll write about that one next time.

This process has been frustrating, more than a little heartbreaking, and just plain hard. It's hard to feel such lack of control over such a major purchase. I guess going into this, neither of us thought finding our first house was going to go like this. Maybe we were naïve in thinking we'd look at a couple of houses, feel that "this is the one" feeling, and be done with it.

We argue more than we've ever argued. There's tension sometimes that's never existed before. The stress of finding our house has certainly been taking its toll.

So we're writing this blog to try to make sense of the process, of maybe trying to gain some perspective and insight into this ridiculous roller coaster we're on. Maybe it's an attempt to try to feel somewhat in control.

Is our plight any different from any other first-time home buyers in Toronto? Probably not. Maybe this blog can help make others feel like there is still community, even in such a ridiculously competitive housing market like the one we're currently experiencing.

We know what it's like. Maybe you do, too.