A real estate journalist faces the realities of buying a home, finding she is ill-prepared

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Published Date 1/26/2022

There is nothing like a real estate expert personally experiencing the peaks and valleys of buying a home during the pandemic to tell the world the real scoop about it. Realtor.com real estate journalist Clare Trapasso could have sworn she had steeled herself for what followed, but revelations abounded during the process, and she lived to tell the tale.

As first-time buyers, she and her partner knew that finding a home outside of New York City would be a challenge. But after having paid a king’s ransom in rent for a tiny apartment, they were ready to face the process she had only written about but never experienced. What followed was enough to write a book about, and she offers a bit of advice to homebuyers as a result of it.

When Trapasso got promptly outbid on their first offer, “Covering this housing market, I soon learned, was nothing at all like trying to navigate it myself. We suffered crushing disappointments and made more than our share of mistakes.” She goes on to say that it took them nine long months of house-hunting in three states, touring dozens of homes, losing multiple bidding wars, and rescinding an offer on a fixer-upper that would need too much work — all before they finally closed on their renovated Cape Cod style home outside New York City in late 2021.

Trapasso now admits she is not the tough New Yorker she assumed she was. After spending years as a reporter covering crime in the Big Apple, she figured tears were not in her wheelhouse. But each time she got her hopes up and then lost out in a bidding war, she ended up curled up on the couch, full of emotion. Her partner was more pragmatic, chalking up each defeat to what Providence eventually had in mind. But it’s not what Trapasso wanted to hear as she “tried to find solace at the bottom of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.”

Finally a home came up for sale in a town she and her partner loved — recently renovated, and located in a great neighborhood. They offered at an attractive price, waived the traditional home inspection and instead asked for one that would evaluate the structural and engineering components of the home, such as the roof, boiler, foundation, electrical, and plumbing. “This meant we weren’t going to back out of the deal unless there was a big, expensive-to-fix issue. Our real estate agent found us a mortgage lender that could close as quickly as an all-cash offer. That helped our bid—one of six—to be accepted.”

So Trapasso’s first word of advice is to never lose hope. Her second is to prepare yourself for compromises, because the home you end up buying may not have everything you want. The home they bought had no garage, no A/C, and no big backyard for their dogs. But there was a lovely garden, a roomy deck and they plan to eventually add the air conditioning.

Next, she admits buying a home can be financially terrifying. Escrow fees (handled by an attorney in NY) were evidently obscene. And the money it had taken the couple years to save and represented years of sacrifices was about to all but disappear. “We were about to sign up for 30 years of fixed-rate mortgage payments. We had crunched our numbers and knew almost down to the penny what we could afford if we wanted to still go on vacation, save for retirement, and manage financially if one of us lost a job.” Even though the couple would be paying less each month than they did in the city, they would soon be deeply in debt and couldn’t simply move to a cheaper apartment if something went wrong. Her advice? This, too, shall pass.

She encourages buyers to shop around for a mortgage instead of just signing on the dotted line with the first friendly loan officer. When she found an online one she thought was a keeper, she still checked around to see if the deal she was getting was all it was cracked up to be. When she saw a better one in an ad elsewhere, she took a screenshot of the ad and asked the brokerage to match it. Then she took that offer to three other lenders with brick-and-mortar locations. She ended up saving thousands upfront and thousands more over the life of their loan. But she also warns buyers to freeze their credit snapshot in time. No new credit cards, no moving money around, no financing of new furniture, closing bank accounts or buying a new iPhone until after the loan closes and you have the keys to the house.

Her last big suggestion? Keep some money in the bank for the unexpected. Even though Trapasso spent her adulthood expecting landlords to fix whatever went wrong, she knew that it would be a whole new ball game owning a home. Clogged dryer vents. Roof sealant. Servicing the boiler once a year. Chimney and gutter cleaning. New locks all around. Those are the must-do items. Then there are the want-to-do-things, like trimming hideously overgrown bushes, acid-washing a really stained driveway — and the list goes on and on.

But in the end, there is, after all, a house with your name on it.

Realtor, TBWS

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