House-buying for the Anal-Retentive and Highly Emotional

The past six years have been a constant state of planning and fantasizing for me. From the house-buying books to the penny-pinching to the endless daydreaming of someday owning a home-- somewhere along the way I managed to convince myself that buying a house would be the most blissed-out experience ever.

It's not.

It's been a nightmare.

And I made it harder than it needed to be.

I've long believed it would take me at least 10 years to get to a point where I would be able to buy a house. That's because I never suspected I would move to Salt Lake City, where our monthly rent near downtown is less than what I paid for an even smaller apartment in unimpressive Upland, California almost ten years ago. You can imagine how ridiculously ecstatic I was when I realized I would (finally!) have a place of my own. No more throwing away money on rent, no more begging landlords to please fix the heater, no more living in borrowed homes fulfilling someone else's dreams.

Enter Ramona Avenue, a quiet tree-lined street near the heart of downtown Sugarhouse, one of my favorite, albeit expensive, neighborhoods in Salt Lake City. The first offer we put on a tiny cottage on Ramona Ave was rejected due to poor communication between the seller and his agent (later they came back asking me to "save them" because their buyer backed out). The second offer we made was on a house just one block away from the first. I made the novice home-buyers mistake of letting myself fall completely in love with that house. Before our offer was even accepted, I was browsing furniture online. That was going to be our home. I was sure of it.

When our second offer was rejected, I fell into a miniature depression. I cried, I couldn't eat, I just wanted to lay around in bed feeling sad about how somebody else was moving their crap into MY house.

But no, I had to pull myself together. Clear my mind and stay focused on the biggest decision I would be making to date. Buying a house is a financial decision, I reminded myself. I can't let myself get all crazed. So when we put an offer on a third place (a gigantic foreclosure listing on a corner lot with a basement income-generating unit), I reminded myself to stay composed.

Tired of waiting for the bank to respond, we went to look at more houses. Interest rates weren't going to stay at 4.5% forever. The fourth house, a mid-1920s bungalow on a tiny dead-end street near the university, immediately felt like home to me. It was smaller in every way and not located in Sugarhouse, but something told me to put an offer on that house. The following day, both House #3 and House #4 accepted our offer.

From a financial standpoint, the foreclosure listing would have offered quite a bit of instant equity, which was what drew me to it in the first place. So we decided to go with it.

That is, until we realized there used to be meth in the house.

Sure, it was technically "cleaned out," but no one really knows how much meth was in the house and what the potential long-term health affects might be. Was I willing to take a chance on our health, especially when we've been talking about having kids in a few years? How many buyers just like us aren't willing to take that chance? Would I be comfortable living in a home with those questions lingering in my mind?

The answer was 'no.' Yes, buying a home is an investment, but for us, it's an investment that we have to make a life in. And therein lies the two most important lessons I learned from this process: (1) If you're buying a home to have a life in, your mindset reflects that, and (2) It's important to recognize the difference between being emotional and having a gut instinct.

Being emotional is about feeling stuff, like fear, sadness, anger, etc.-- it's a reaction to something that happens to you (e.g. getting excited about making a bunch of money). Gut instinct is informed by something you know, whether or not it's clear what exactly it is you know. Being emotional is reactive. Gut instinct is proactive. And my gut instinct has always led me the right way; now was no time to question it.

But I did. After two months of disappointment and unpleasant surprises, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. And in the past two weeks since we've been under contract, I can honestly say that I've second-guessed myself to the point of ridiculousness. And it's enough. Really.

My sister Lorin said to me: "Diana, you'll know you made the right decision when you're sitting in your new home and you can't help but feel incredibly happy." My friend Kelly agrees. I think deep down inside I knew that, and that despite what my mind was telling me, my gut instinct was telling me something else.

Life has taught me that gut instinct doesn't have universal answers, just the right answer for you. It knows everything your brain knows plus it sees clearly the things in your heart that you're not always aware of. My gut instinct has always been braver than me, smarter than me. Trusting it can't possibly be a bad thing.


**Cartoon by Jim Borgman