Buying a House - Scott's Story (Part 1)

Reality set in with a text from the landlord – “can we have a chat tonight?”

He breaks the news that he’s decided to sell the house and move into a condo. Our first response is to let him know that we’ve been considering buying for some time now and that we were just waiting for Steph to get a few paycheques at her new position before we seriously started shopping. This immediately lightened the tone of the conversation. The landlord no longer felt like he was leaving us high and dry.

If you’ve read my previous blogs, you know that as couple, Steph and I’s first financial goal was to become completely debt-free. Once debt free, we’d start planning for children, then start saving for a house (which is pretty easy to do when you don’t have monthly credit card bills, student loan bills, or car payments!) We’ve been saving for a down payment pretty aggressively, given Steph’s been on maternity leave, since becoming debt-free in 2015 – about $700/month if you’d like an exact figure. Our friends have often commented how little we eat out and don’t go to the movies and that’s simply because we had other plans for our money.

So Friday night (the same night of the landlord discussion) we contact our mortgage broker who I met through a business networking event a few years ago. We fill in a mortgage application, which includes Steph’s letter of employment (we got it a week prior) and my last year’s Notice of Assessments because I am self-employed. Our broker promptly gets back to us informing us of what we qualify for, a good ballpark figure for closing costs, and an approximate monthly mortgage payment amount so we can ensure it fits our budget.

We are comfortable with the amounts given, so we contact our realtor and set an appointment for Thursday.

Stay tuned next week for updates.