More Money Podcast - 063 What It's Really Like to Be a New Homeowner - Jessica Moorhouse

Episode Date: October 6, 2016

For this special solo episode, I share what's been happening on the new homeowner-front since my first episode of the season where I announced that my husband and I bought our first place. Long description: In my first episode (and first solo episode) for season 3 of the Mo' Money Podcast, I shared with you the big news that my husband and I bought our very first place. After one failed house hunt two years ago, we restarted our search in July and ended up buying a townhouse in Toronto. Not only that, we were able to put 25% for our down-payment so we could keep our monthly payments as low as possible. Well, since I recorded that episode at the beginning of September, a lot has happened. We've owned our home for 1 1/2 months, and we've already experienced quite a few ups and downs as new homeowners. Some of the Not So Fun Things About New Homeownership Overall, we are still super happy with our decision, but it has hands down been the most stressful period in our lives (save for maybe planning our wedding 3 years ago). You know when people warn you that things are gonna go wrong and break when you buy a place so be prepared? Well, they did, and we are seriously so glad we were prepared! At the end of the episode I offer some tips I believe everyone thinking of buying a place should consider. One of those tips was to have a special emergency fund for housing repairs and replacements that you'll need to do right away. For us, we had to replace our washer/dryer and stove within the first week of moving in. How much did that cost is? About $3,000! But we need clean our clothes and cook our food so we had to replace them both ASAP. Luckily, we had the cash stashed away so we could afford it. If we didn't, we may have had to dip into our other emergency funds (for real emergencies or job losses), or had to put them on credit. Since I'm am 100% anti-debt (though now I guess I'm not totally debt-free with my mortgage), that just wasn't an option for me. How You Can Easily Get Swept Up into a Never-ending Spending Cycle Besides having to drop some major cash after getting the keys, our place has pretty much been total chaos since we moved all of our stuff in. Now, we finally have some space and privacy. I'll most likely do another update podcast episode at either the 6 month or 1 year mark. Until then, make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel as I'll be posting some new videos soon all about life as a new homeowner! For more podcast episodes, check out the Podcast page. Shownotes: jessicamoorhouse.com/63 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, and welcome to Episode 63 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thank you for joining me to this special solo episode. I'm excited to share this one with you because I feel like with my first episode of the season, I got to share the exciting news that me and my husband finally bought our first place. But I knew that I'd have so much more to share after that because we had literally just moved in a couple weeks ago. And so there I knew some things would happen. Being a new homeowner, things you know, not working and things not going how we thought or just surprises. So I'm excited to do this episode kind of of a follow-up episode, to kind of talk about what's been going on now that we've been living in our place for,

oh gosh, I guess a couple months now or maybe a month and a half. I'm bad with math, or am I? But before I kind of dive in with my solo monologue episode, I want to say a big thank you to today's podcast episode sponsor, Duca. Make sure to check them out at duca.com. And they're a credit union in Ontario, and they have this really great product right now. It's first of its kind, and that's why I really wanted to team up with them because I'm like, this is pretty cool. I definitely want to share this with my audience. They have a product called the Community Hero Mortgage. So it's not just your regular old mortgage. It's a mortgage that they want to give you the best rate on. But there's also another element that's all about social purpose, which is really cool. So it's about giving back to the community. And how they

do that is they are donating to Habitat for Humanity in the greater Toronto area. So make sure to check that out at duca.com. It's a very cool thing. And I really hope that more banks and financial institutions will kind of follow suit with something like this. So shall we get to my monologue? All right, let's do it. I've got my wine. I've got my microphone. I've got my energy and I'm ready to go. Okay. So we, and by we, I mean me and my husband, Josh, who was episode two, in case you want to know what he sounds like and what his whole deal is with his freelancing business and all that. We bought this townhouse. We closed mid-August and we didn't really move in when we closed. We scrambled to get as much

stuff as we could out of our apartment and move it into our new place. But because we're bad at scheduling and just things kind of happen, we actually had to go away to Vancouver for a full week for a friend's wedding, which was awesome and beautiful. But because of that, we only spent a few nights in our new home with boxes everywhere and just a mattress on the floor and no food in our fridge. And then we went to Vancouver for a week and came back and then we're so busy with work and just everything going on. It was a very slow kind of move in. We just had a bunch of stuff floating around and just felt super, super unorganized. And honestly, I think we ate out those first few weeks almost every night, which I hate because I'm, I mean, obviously my personal finance blogger and podcaster, I can't stand wasting money on eating out. I love eating out. Don't get me wrong, but I feel like that's kind of like a treat, like a fun thing to do when you've earned it,

when you've been good with your budget. And so to eat out every day, it kind of makes it less fun. And, uh, it's just really fricking expensive and unhealthy on there's a lot of carbs and salt involved and I don't like that. So it's gotten a little bit better now that it's been a few more weeks. But I'll be honest, we've still got a lot of boxes and we still need to get rid of some furniture and get new furniture. And people keep asking me, have you painted the place? No, we haven't painted the place. We don't even have chairs in our living room. I mean, we're barely, we just started cooking in our own kitchen. We just got, you know, new appliances. We had to replace them, which I'll get to in a minute. I mean, painting the place, changing the colors on the walls is our last problem. We're

just trying to survive here at the moment. It's just a bit insane. And so that would be kind of my first, you know, tip. Be prepared for total chaos for a lot longer than you expect. I thought, you know, we, I mean, we've done a lot of moves together. We moved to our first place, but we moved in together in Vancouver. And then from there, we moved to our apartment in Toronto. And so this is our third move together but before that I've done I mean I think I moved three or four times that first year of you know being on my own after I moved out of my parents place so I thought I kind of had this moving thing down but I don't know when you get older and you just, you accumulate more stuff. And even though we tried so hard not to accumulate stuff in our tiny apartment, it's surprising how much stuff you can just tuck away. I mean, this is a much bigger place. We lived in a one bedroom apartment

and now this is two bedrooms, two levels. It's a townhouse. It's much bigger, much more square footage, but somehow there's just not enough storage. And so we have just books laying around because we don't have any bookshelves to put them on. And there's just a lot of stuff that needs to be tucked away and there's no place to tuck it. And it's kind of driving me a bit crazy. So that's a lot of fun. So I mentioned earlier that we had to replace some appliances. So that's another thing. So not only do you have to prepare for total chaos, you also need to have a contingency fund, an emergency fund for when you move into your new place. Because this is exactly what other homeowners told us. Make sure you have some hash on hand because you know this is exactly what other homeowners told us make sure you have some hash on hand because you will need it because things will be broken things won't work like you

think they're supposed to you will need to buy things immediately on arrival of your new place even if it's a new place and this place isn't old it's 12 years old it's had the same owners for that entire time and we thought we were kind of, you know, lucking out. This is, you know, newer place. They took care of it. We're so lucky. And then of course we move in and then we kind of realize, hmm, you know, we only had two visits to the place or possibly three. And, you know, when you're just kind of looking and you're not living in the place, it's hard to really see all of the things that need to be fixed, all the problems that may arise. And so when we moved in, of course, the first thing you kind of do is do some laundry, right? And we did and the washer worked okay, but the dryer did not dry. And when it did, it just made the clothes and towel smell really gross. And so we think that

maybe A, the washer dryer was just old. It was on its last legs. And B, they probably just didn't take care of it. I think there's like vents that they just didn't take the kind of lint out properly and just didn't really take care of it and clean it. That happens. They had a couple of kids, so they probably did a lot of laundry and just, you know, things happen. And so we're so we're like okay great we have to replace that right off the bat because obviously we need clean clothes to live um and so off to home depot we went and wow did we find how expensive things are i mean we did you know we're very frugal very you know conscious of our money and so we did a ton of research online to like what's the best this what's the best price what are reviews blah blah but when you need

something urgently you know you get this pressure like well we need to make like, what's the best this? What's the best price? What are reviews? But when you need something urgently, you get this pressure like, well, we need to make a decision. What is it? But you also want to make the best decision. So we went back and forth. We went to a bunch of places. We looked online forever. And then eventually we figured on a stackable washer dryer that would fit in our little laundry cupboard. Fun fact though, if you live in a condo or townhouse and you have a very small area to put your washer and dryer, those stackable units are very expensive. They're smaller because they're kind of apartment size, but they're almost more, yeah, I would say they're more expensive than the regular bigger ones that you have for a house. It doesn't make any sense, but it's kind of a ripoff, but it is what it is. So just be prepared.

You know, if you can find a place with a bigger laundry area, that will actually probably save you money because you won't have to buy such an expensive stackable washer dryer. And it'll fit more clothes. I really do miss her. One thing that I didn't think I would miss and I do is, you know, at our apartment, we had a kind of laundromat in the basement. And so you can do three loads at once. And now, sure, we get to do it in our own place, but you have to do one load at a time and they're smaller loads than we're used to. But it is what it is. Okay. And the second thing that we had to replace, which is super annoying, is we get into replace and we say, hey, that looks like it's a different

stove than when we originally saw on our couple viewings. And it was, it was absolutely brand new. But then I kind of looked at it and like, this looks exactly like our apartment stove, which is a budget stove. And I hated our old stove. And so I looked online and, you know, we went to Best Buy and, um, yeah, it is the cheapest stove you can buy. And so clearly the stove that they had did not work. So they needed to replace it because everything had to be in working condition when we moved in. Um, and yeah, it did work fine. But I just, you know, this is our first place. I want to look nice. And if that meant I had to spend some time and energy on trying to sell this stove on Kijiji so I can, you know, get some money and we can replace it with a nicer

stainless steel stove, then yes, I was going to do that. And so that's what I did. It was like, just looking back, I can't believe we did all the things that we did in the first week of really living here. On top of the, you know, working full time with our crazy schedules and trying to unpack things and get things in order. We went to like Home Depot and Rona and every kind of home hardware store imaginable every single night after work and spent hours there. Basically, we were always had to leave when the store was closing, they were kicking us out. And it was because there's just so many little things that we had to do. So yeah, anyways, I did sell the stove off Kijiji, like pretty quickly, thank goodness, probably because it was in, you know,

brand new, and we never used it. And then we got a newer one. But of course, that one didn't really... I know this is ridiculous to complain about, but we got this beautiful Samsung stainless steel stove. It's beautiful. After less than a week of using it, and it's a glass top, already the little film on top of it, it's already kind of getting wrecked. And we're not crazy, like just bashing pans and pots around. And of course, you know, what you got to do is like, okay, final, I'll contact a Best Buy or Samsung and see if there's anything they can do. And of course, they're like, there's nothing we can do. This is your problem. You did it. And that's where we're at right now. So fun things to look forward to if you're thinking about

buying a place and buying big appliances. I mean, it's something that we never had to deal with as a renter. We never had to think about things. And there's lots of things that irritate me now that would have never irritated me as a renter. For instance, I see, you know, all of our light switches. I feel like the people who had this place before us, they painted the whole place, but they didn't take the light switch kind of, um, covers off before painting. And so all of them have little specks of paint on them. Like, why would you not take those things off? And it's impossible to get that paint off. So now I have to replace the covers of all of her light switches. I mean, why? It's just the little details that drive me bonkers.

Also, like our toilets, they're fine. Except you can tell that they didn't clean them enough because there's like that pink kind of perma stuff on the bowl. And it's disgusting. And I honestly just want to rip up that toilet and just throw it out and get a new one. But we can't because we're homeowners and being a homeowner is very expensive. And so basically what we're trying to do, even though it's driving me nuts, is to attack kind of the biggest problems first and going from there. If things work, we're not going to replace them and going from there. If things work, we're not going to replace them until they stop working. If things are just, you know, kind of,

oh, but it doesn't look nice. Well, too bad. Let's, you know, do the smart economical thing and wait until, you know, it's a real problem to replace. Another thing that we discovered, because we've never had a very open outdoor area. We always had this balcony that no one could get into because it was on the 16th floor. Well, we now have kind of this little outdoor patio as a little, you know, kind of rail or fence around it a little bit. But, you know, we just weren't thinking. And so when we moved in, my husband put his bike out there

and he left it out there for a good week. And then one day he came out, he's like, Hey, where's my bag? Did you move it? I'm like, no, I didn't move it. And yeah, I didn't move it. He didn't move it. It got stolen because he did not lock it up. Even though we're in this, you know, relatively secure looking townhouse complex, you know, we're still in the city and we don't know who's walking around or what their intentions are or whatever. And it's kind of almost scary because someone had to like jump in to, or, or I guess they could have reached over, but it's still a pretty high

fence thing. Um, but they probably jumped in there, grabbed his bike and then left, which it just freaks me kind of out. Like we are, we were a little bit more safe and secure in our apartment building because, you know, you did have to have a fob to get in, even though lots of people just let everyone in, which was really annoying. I was like, don't hold the door if they don't have a pass, but whatever. And, you know, you had to take the elevator, you had to know where you had to go. And then once you were in your unit, no one can get onto your balcony. So it was a bit more secure that way. This, it is nice having, you know, just a front door. You don't have to wait for the elevator, which I realized is such

a blessing because I used to have to wait 10 minutes down, 10 minutes up. I had no idea I was wasting all my life waiting for the elevator. So it's nice having the front door, nice having, you know, this nice, you know, personal outdoor space, you know, off our kitchen. But it's also like, well, you know, there is the possibility someone could break in, which is why I am absolutely thinking of spending the money on a security alarm system. I think it's definitely worth the money when, you know, not that we really have anything valuable in this place, but just for kind of peace of mind. And it might just be, you know, a good, you know, use of our money, I think. So I hope I haven't been scaring you off homeownership. I just kind of need to get some of those things off my chest.

You know, I just want to be real. Let's be honest. Like you think homeownership and house hunting and all that stuff is super glamorous and fun. It can be for like a second, but the reality is it's a lot of work. It was honestly the weeks leading up and then the weeks, you know, during our time of moving and moving into our new place were absolutely the most stressful weeks of my life in 2016. And I haven't had like the most calm 2016. I've been very, very busy. But that was absolutely the most stressful. Me and my husband rarely bicker, but we were bickering every day off the little things just because we weren't sleeping

enough, eating properly. And we were just like under a lot of pressure just to get this house in order. But that's just kind of the reality of things. Moving initially can be very stressful and it can be very expensive because you don't really know what you're getting yourself into. You don't know what's working, what's not working, what you have to replace and all that kind of stuff. But I don't want to scare you off because there's a lot of benefits. So the other day, my husband and I had to go back to our old apartment to do one last clean. And as we, you know, got into our, uh, that complex and we're waiting in the elevator to go up to our suite, we both just looked at each other. We're like, wow, I can't believe we lived here for three

years. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but just the difference between living in that apartment and that tiny unit and then our place now, it's, it's, it's kind of crazy that we made this big leap. Really? I didn't think that we'd be able to afford something like I, it was always a dream of mine to be able to own property, own my own place by 30, but that we actually did is, is kind of crazy and really significant like it's it is a big um kind of accomplishment i don't like you know really saying that because i you know some people can't afford it and some people have to delay and that's fine because it is a huge financial decision but is it can be a big accomplishment i at least think so personally i'm really you know proud and excited that we were able to afford to buy our first place in our early 30s because it's getting harder and harder to do that as a millennial in this day and age and when the housing markets are so crazy in lots of the big cities in Canada and the US. look at, you know, everything, get the rest of our kind of stuff and just do one last clean.

And we felt really, really thankful that we didn't have to call that home anymore. We got to close that chapter. I mean, that was the first place we'd ever had when we moved to Toronto. That was our first place, our first home. We created so many memories, but there's also lots of, you know, there's lots of good memories and lots of, you know, kind of dark memories, especially the first, you know, couple months of living in the city, you know, it was a tough time. I've done a podcast episode about that, which I'll include in today's show notes. But, you know, it was good and bad. And I'm kind of excited to just close that chapter and start a new one in this new home with my husband. And really, this is the first place

we get to make it our own. We've never been able to choose what paint colors we want. We don't have to choose an off-white or something that's so light that they can repaint white over it. We get to choose whatever color we want. It could be a dark or a mid-tone. Who knows? We get to choose different furniture because it's a different space. And so we're not limited to this one big room, basically. And what's really exciting is finally, my husband has his own room for his own office and I have my own room. Well, it's really the kitchen kind of area, the dining area. I'm using that as my office slash YouTube area. I'm sure the neighbors, when they walk by, I don't know what they think I'm doing, but that is my office next to the kitchen. And

I'm very excited because I've just been kind of doing all of my blogging and podcasting and side hustle work in my living room. And I would really love to not do that anymore. I would like to have my living room as my room for living and just, you know, relaxing and then have my kind of workhouse in my office over there. So I'm very excited to see if that actually does make me more productive or, you know, what kind of things arise from me just having a new space. And I'm also going to try to make that my workout area. Not sure how I'm going to figure that to make that my workout area. Not sure how I'm going to figure that out, but I didn't need that much space in my old apartment to

be able to do my workout videos. So I'm sure I'll be fine. So to sort of wrap up, I want to kind of end this episode giving some pieces of advice based on my experience. I know I'm going, we're going to learn a lot more this whole year. I mean, it's only been a couple months since we moved in. So I'm sure there's a lot we haven't experienced. Winter yet, that should be fun or scary. We don't actually know if our heating works. So let's finger cross that and hope it works. But yeah, so here are some of my kind of tidbits and advice for people. You know, I'll first start with, you know, if you start with if you're interested in looking for your own place, here are my pieces of advice for you to start off with. Okay, number one, and this is kind of what we learned because we did have a unique experience. So we did look for a house two years

ago because we thought we could afford a house in Toronto, but we could not. And during that two-month period of house hunting, we learned a lot about what to do and what not to do. And so we definitely applied all of that knowledge into our house hunting strategy this time. And that's why, honestly, I felt like our house hunting experience this time was so much more easy. And we just knew what we wanted. And it went very quickly. And that's a good thing. You don't want to be house hunting forever because it's so stressful and it takes over quickly, and that's a good thing. You don't want to be house hunting forever because it's so stressful, and it takes over your life, and you've

got more to live for. You've got a life, so you don't want to take over all of your time and energy, and it will just make you crazy. Okay, so here are some of my tips for before you go house hunting. These are the things that you need to do. So we have all the facts, figures, information. So when you do find the place that you think is right for you, you can make a smart financial decision with that. Because let's be honest, buying a house isn't just buying a house. It is a huge financial investment.

So the first thing is before you do anything, before you step inside even an open house, you need to set a budget. And there's a lot of ways, people will tell you, oh, you can afford this, you can afford this. Don't listen to them. You need to set what number is most comfortable for you. When we were looking to get a mortgage,

we were told that we can get, I think it was like $600,000, something crazy. And I'm like, there was no way when we looked at what our monthly expenses would be and what our mortgage payment would be every month. We're like, no, we can't afford that. That doesn't make me comfortable. I feel like if we had that, we would be absolutely house poor. And I don't want to live like that. I don't really want to change my lifestyle too much by living, you know, owning a home. And so what we did, my husband and I, we, you know, played around with some mortgage calculators. There's a ton online, just Google it. And, you know, found out kind of what our average monthly expenses would be for utilities and all those other extra expenses, property taxes,

whatnot. And then looked at what our month to month would be. And our goal was to make it kind of match what we were already paying for rent and all of those utilities. Obviously we are paying more, even though we did pay, put quite a bit down, but it's just like owning a home in general is just more expensive than renting. There's no way around that. That's just how it is. But we wanted to get it as close to that number as possible. And so we kind of were able to do that. And that's when we kind of came up with the number. Okay, ideally, if we're looking for a townhouse, we want to find something that's in the $450,000 to $500,000, which is our top. We don't want to go above that. If we go above that, we're going to be kind of feeling a little restricted. And we definitely don't want to feel restricted because although I do have a

nine to five, my husband is a freelancer. And so it's nice to have a bit more flexibility when it comes to how much we owe on bills. And so we wanted to make sure we can absolutely afford that. So make sure you come up with that number before anyone else gives you that number. And then don't divert from that number because believe me, you will probably be in a situation where you maybe are looking at a place and we even did this. We were told to go to this one open house and we did. And then of course, there's another open house across the street and it looks kind of nicer. And so we just, oh, we're just going to pop in just for fun. And of course you fall in love with it because it's so much nicer and it's so much nicer because it's a hundred thousand dollars more. And that's when it's the danger zone. And you're like, are you really going to spend a hundred thousand dollars more than you

want it? You do not want to do that. Stick to your budget and just don't look at places that are outside of your budget. It'll just make things tougher. You don't want to fall in love with a house that you can't afford. All right. The second thing is understand your closing costs. So closing costs can be very expensive. And when I'm talking about closing costs, and again, you can just, you know, I'll put more information about that in the show notes, but basically I'm talking about things like there's land transfer tax, title insurance, your legal fees, PST on CMHC insurance, things like that, that you will have to pay on top of your down payment and to get your place, basically. And this is thousands of dollars. I think it was like over $5,000 just for, um, land transfer tax. Um, I'll try to put the, I'll actually look at some of our documents and see if I can, uh, put some of those numbers in the show notes to share

with you just so you get an idea of how much things cost. It's expensive. It ain't cheap. So make sure you have thousands of dollars set aside for that. And again, there's lots of closing cost calculators out there so you can figure out how much you actually have to put aside. All right, number three, I would say is have, you know, I think I mentioned this earlier, kind of a contingency emergency fund for those unexpected expensive surprises. We spent, I think, $3,000 on a new oven stove and a new washer dryer. And we spent that in the first week we bought our place. The first week we were in our place, we had to spend an extra three grand just so we can cook food and clean our clothes. Thank goodness we had cash aside for these emergencies that we're told to

and we're so glad because the last thing you want to do is depend on, you know, a line of credit or a credit card. And then you'll find yourself, oh, we're in debt now. You do not want to do that. Do not get into debt just because you didn't set aside some cash for something like this. Number four is do your research when it comes to finding a mortgage. So I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that Duca is the sponsor of this episode

because they're awesome and they have a special mortgage called the Community Hero Mortgage that is all about giving you the best rate but also donating money to Habitat for Humanity in the Greater Toronto Area. And so that is a type of mortgage that you may have stumbled upon if you did your research online. There's a lot of different ways you could do this. You could just look at the credit unions and banks and financial institutions that are around and just look on their website and see what's available. There's lots of different rate comparison websites that kind of show you what the general rates that these institutions are offering.

You can go to them directly and just talk to them, or you can go to a mortgage broker and they can look at what rates they can get and they'll try to find the best one for you. So look around. Don't just choose the first mortgage that is told to you. You want to make sure that you make the best decision and get the best, the lowest rate possible because you may not think it's such a big deal like what's the difference between 2.2%, 2.1%? It's thousands of dollars is what it is. So you want to make sure you get the best rate possible.

All right. I'd say like the fifth and last one is finding the best realtor for you. So as I mentioned about two years ago, my husband and I did look for a house. And we had a realtor. We didn't do any research when it came to a realtor. We met her and she seemed great. And we're like, we don't know. And we started looking at places and we slowly realized, you know,

I don't think this is a good fit. And we kind of, you know, probably should have said something sooner rather than later, but we didn't really know any better. And so we decided to stop looking for a house and ended that relationship. But we knew, okay, next time, I think we're going to be a little bit more choosy when it comes to finding a realtor. And we want to find someone that is an expert in the neighborhood that we really want to live in, an expert when it comes to looking for the type of house. So we're not going to look for a house

this time. We're going to look for a condo townhouse. We want to make sure our realtor specializes in finding those types of residences for his clients. And then we also want to make sure that we just like the person and we like how they deal with other people. You don't want to have a realtor that you're like, oh my gosh, I'm so embarrassed that we have them as a realtor. You want to make sure it's a good relationship, that they have you back, that you can trust them and that you can ask them for advice and that you just feel like they're a genuine person. And at the end of the day, these people are salespeople, but you want to find the least sleazy of the salespeople. And there are a ton of great realtors out there. And again, of course, you can go without a realtor. You can do it yourself. I know some people who have, but my experience, I don't know. You know, when you do get a realtor as a buyer

and you're not selling anything, you don't pay them. So that was kind of a no-brainer for me. I'm like, we don't have to pay you and you're still going to find this stuff? Okay, let's do this. It is the seller of the place that pays their commission. You do not have to pay your realtor a commission if you were only buying. So what's the harm? Really? Right? So make sure that you find a good realtor for you who's an expert in what you specifically want. And if you find that they're just not getting it, then it's time to cut them loose because you don't want to waste their time or your time. You want to have a good loose because you don't want to waste their time or your time. You want to have a good experience. You don't want to be stuck buying a place because

you feel pressured to buy something because you've been using them as a realtor for so long. You want to make sure that if you are in a buyer representation agreement with them that you can end it. Lots of realtors are totally fine with just breaking that contract and the relationship because if they find that their client doesn't want to work with them, why would they want to waste their time? But again, that's also something important to note that if you do have to sign a buyer representation agreement, and usually a realtor will tell you to sign that upon putting in an offer on a place, look at that contract very carefully and make sure that it's only for a very small chunk of time. So for like 30 days and the contract is done,

or you can even be like, okay, this contract is good for this offer on this place. But if we want to make an offer in another place, then we need to set up a new buyer representation agreement. You just want to make sure you don't get locked into a contract, a relationship with a realtor for like six months or a year, and you really don't want that and you can't get out of it. So it's best just to be very smart about that. I'll also include a link in the show notes because I did write a blog post specifically about buyer representation agreements. So much fun. All right. So those are kind of my top tips. I know I will absolutely have a lot more advice about being a homeowner. I want to be super handy around this house. And so I've already done a couple of things. I'm kind of proud of myself.

I was able to, okay, this probably isn't something to be proud of, but whatever. I installed a new toilet seat in our bedroom bathroom. So I did that myself. And I may have looked at a video tutorial on YouTube on how to do it because I couldn't figure out on my own with the diagram, but I did it and I'm pretty proud of myself. And my husband has successfully fixed our downstairs bathroom. I wasn't flushing properly and he just did something. Again, I think he used YouTube to help him, but hey, YouTube's the best, right? Also, FYI, I got a YouTube channel. I'll include the link in the show notes just in case you want to subscribe. Anyways, he was able to fix our toilet and now it works swimmingly. And there are plenty of

things that I know we have to fix around the house. And sure as hell, there is not enough time in the world to fix all these things as soon as we'd like. But that's okay. We're not going anywhere anytime soon. We're stuck with this place for several years. We're stuck with this place. We're happy to be here. This is a good place. Anyways, thank you so much for listening to this episode, listening to some of my rants about being a new homeowner, the hit me up on Twitter, send me an email, whatever you want. I don't care. I appreciate any kind of feedback, any questions, anything I can do to help someone in need.

And thank you again to today's episode sponsor, Duca. Again, check them out at duca.com and check out their new Community Hero Mortgage, which is the first of its kind social purpose mortgage that's all about giving back to the community and offering great rates to its customers. So make sure to check them out at duca.com. And thank you so much for listening. Check out the show notes for this episode as well. JessicaMorales.com slash 63. And on that note, I will see you back here next Wednesday. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.