If you’ve got a ton of questions about buying your first home, you’re not alone. Join me, @RBC_Canada and a panel of 5 experts for the #FirstHome Twitter chat, on June 5 (tonight!) at 8 pm, EST. Get answers to your most burning questions – and Canadian participants get a chance to win RBC Visa Gift Cards!

As the summer begins, open house signs are popping up everywhere.  I’ve been living in our house for eight months and I can’t help myself from thinking about how different buying a house has been from what I thought it would be. Both the first time, and the second!

The decision for Jesse and I to buy our first house was fueled by house prices in our city, four years of apartment living, and getting engaged. With a healthy side order of “I grew up with animals and if we don’t live somewhere where we can get a dog soon I’m liable to just smuggle one into the apartment”. There were still some houses that were affordable in our area, but the housing market was picking up. We wanted to have a place of our own but we had no idea what the process was going to be like.

I also had no idea how different home buying is between Canada and the United States until I started tweeting about what we were going through.

For Instance…

  • Houses are listed early in the week
  • You can go to showings through the week or to open houses on the weekend
  • Most owners accept offers the weekend after the house is listed
  • Buyers find out one the same day that they submit their offer (often less than six days from first seeing the house!) if they’ve bought a home

Our first house, after five years of improvements

Our first step was to meet with the bank to try and find out what we could afford. By that time I had played with so many online calculators that I was completely muddled and had no confidence in what we would be paying on a monthly basis toward our mortgage at any price point! And I had no idea who would help us figure that out- the bank? The realtor? A friendly neighborhood astrologer?

My tactic was to pelt everyone we met with housing or money questions, until someone stepped forward and said “Why yes! That’s my job!” (Our realtor ended up helping us with that after my signature question pelt.)

We decided to work with a mortgage specialist so we could find out all the financing options that were available to us on each property, and so we could choose a mortgage product that would be flexible when we eventually sold our house.

In 2008 I had no idea what I was going to do for a living long term, but I knew that it might be outside of a normal nine to five. I had just started this blog and my first etsy shop selling knits (Alert: There are photos of me that are a total time warp, and some very beginner etsy listing photos. You’ve been warned!).

Just in case I wanted to work for myself one day, I wanted a mortgage option that would have a simple process for transferring our mortgage over to our eventual second home, and that didn’t have a huge list of requirements that we had to meet when that time came. If you might want to work for yourself one day too, you can do this with any bank  that you meet with.

In the end, we started looking in late March of 2008, bid on five or six houses, saw one naked person when we were at a showing (still burned into my memory!), and had our offer accepted on a tiny, sweet 720 square foot house in May. Thanks to our realtor’s savvy, we were the winning bid with eleven other potential buyers at the table and were able to move in that July. Our mortgage payment ended up being over $150 less per month than what we’d been paying in rent, which completely shocked me.

$150 less per month, and I got to have puppies?? Heavenly!

Mal & His Antics

Looking back, the hardest part was looking at places without getting discouraged. As a first time buyer there wasn’t a lot that was beautiful in our price range, and there was a lot of competition for what could have been transformed into a nice space. I’m really glad we hung in there… and that I finally got my puppy fix.

Disclaimer: This post content is sponsored by Royal Bank of Canada, but the views and opinions expressed are only my own. As with everything, if you need legal or financial advice, speak one on one with an expert.

Do you rent or own? What do you love & loathe about it?

I definitely have both (I’ll share them in the comments below) and hope you follow the #FirstHome discussion on Twitter tonight!