How Starting My Home Search Kicked Off A Serious Case of House-Fever
My house fever began in 2015.
At the time, I was fresh out of graduate school, saddled with student loan debt and living in a six-hundred-square-foot apartment. I was single, with almost no savings, and the idea of buying a house felt unattainable.
But that didn’t stop me from feeding my obsession. I spent hours scrolling through online MLS listings. I installed the Realtor app on my phone so I could be updated in real time when new listings appeared on the market. I ran through endless financial scenarios in my head, calculating and re-calculating what type of monthly mortgage payment I could afford to make.
When I began dating my now-husband Sam, a flicker of hope appeared. Someday, with two incomes, we would be able to afford a house. We moved to Washington, DC, where the cost of living was astronomical. If anything, it gave more fuel to my home-obsession fire. I scoured listings, convinced we could find that one diamond-in-the-rough, the one reasonably-priced single family home in the whole DC area.
I began watching episodes of House Hunters, Property Brothers, any type of real estate show I could get my hands on. Sam would shake his head as I devoured episode after episode.
“You know these are probably fake, right? Totally staged?”
I ignored him. Accompanying these individuals on their home-buying journey, even if parts of it were staged, felt like I was moving incrementally closer to my own dream.
After two years in DC, we felt trapped. We loved the city, the endless stream of activities, the close friends we’d made. But the city never really felt like home.
We ended up in Nashville, TN. We got engaged, and secretly I began counting down the days until the lease on our one-bedroom apartment was up. I couldn’t wait to start working with a realtor and actually visit properties in person.
My obsession continued through the spring, summer, and fall of our first year in Nashville. I convinced Sam to visit different neighborhoods in the city. For research purposes, of course. I began checking my real estate app first thing in the morning to spot new listings, even though we still weren’t ready to actually buy.
By the time we got pre-approved and began attending open houses, I was exhausted. It felt like I’d been looking for a house for years instead of days. In a moment of faith, I uninstalled my real estate app and put trust in our realtor.
We ended up with a small brick house in East Nashville. The whole process was quick, almost painless. We’re redoing the kitchen, painting the bedrooms, slowly decorating our first home as a married couple.
Sometimes I still feel the pull of real estate searching. One morning, not long after we moved in, I sat outside in the backyard on our small patio set. I took in the bright, freshly-mown lawn, the string lights hung over the detached garage. It was a beautiful spring day. We only plan to be in this starter house for a few years. Maybe I could start looking for our next house.
I pushed that thought away and continued sipping my coffee. Real estate apps would always be there. Online mortgage calculators weren’t going away. HGTV would continue putting out new episodes of House Hunters. For now, I wanted to enjoy my peaceful backyard, my cozy house, the fact that my once-unattainable dream had come true.
