My story of becoming a homeowner in Brooklyn.
Apr 14, 2014
This blog has been, for the most part, about neighborhood events and establishments. From now on, at least for the next couple of months, every Monday entry will have a more personal story. The story of how I became a first time home owner in Brooklyn.
I’ll start at the beginning, which means I’ll have to back up to about a year ago. At this point I had been working for Realty Collective for a few years, but not as an agent only as an assistant and then social media manager. So, I didn’t know much about the home buying process. All I had was my fantasy of one day owning in Brooklyn. I say fantasy because I really didn’t think it would happen. I saw the economy drop years prior and prices stand still for a while and thought “this might be our chance”. Then my husband lost his job and I gave up hope. But about a year ago (my husband now had a good job at this point, we had not had to dip into our savings thank goodness) I noticed that prices started to rise again and became afraid if we were going to have a shot at buying this was our window and it was closing. That’s when I started really looking at prices and neighborhoods. This was still part fantasy but becoming more real. I should also add that my husband was not on board. But I still browsed Streeteasy and the Times listings weekly. After months of doing this I had an idea of what we could get for our money. The next step that pushed me forward and brought my husband around was when our landlord told us he was thinking of selling the building. We live in Carroll Gardens right now and pay incredibly cheap rent for the area. So we started thinking. If we had to move we would have to pay at least $500 more in rent. A mortgage might not be much more. This is the moment when fantasy turned into reality. Browsing the internet turned into going to open houses and the dream of owning became more real.
Hopefully what my husband and I are going through (we aren’t officially home owners yet but will be in a little over a month) will be informative for others thinking of taking the leap. More to come next Monday!