bought a house

We Bought A House! (Part 2)

Stories!

13 minute read

October 30, 2019

Sitting here in my cozy office, of my house that was newly-built, by somebody other than me, I can’t imagine actually having built a house.

Just how stupid is that to say, given my story from Monday?

All I ever wanted to do was build a house, and I offered a sum of money which was probably more than I could afford, on a dilapidated home, sitting on an over-priced “lot,” with the intention of building a house, and yet I sit here over two years later thanking my lucky stars that I didn’t go that route.

Does that make any sense?

Be honest: have you ever considered what your life would have been like if you didn’t marry your existing spouse?

Okay, okay, some of you are making the obvious jokes, and I probably would have too, if I were asked that question.  But seriously, I’m a happily-married, 39-year-old dude, and I think I have it pretty good.  It pains me sometimes to think about the “what if.”  Because what if I didn’t dress up as Justin Bieber for Halloween in 2010 and go to a party where I met Cat woman?  What if I didn’t find my wife?

Where would I be?  Who would I be married to?  Would I be happy?  Could I be as happy as I am now?

I honestly don’t think so, and while I know that could be conceived as anything from sappy, to naive, to braggadocio, I really believe it.

I can’t be the only person who feels this way, although maybe this isn’t something regularly talked-about but I think about some of the relationships I had before my current one, and I shudder to think what my life would have been like if I’d married that person, or that one.

Can any of you relate?

This is the analogy I have for my house and my home-buying experience, and there are some parallels here.

Buying a home can be like dating.

You try this one, and it doesn’t work.  You try that one, and it fails too.  You have no idea when you’re going to find “the one,” but eventually you do, whether you’re dating or whether you’re buying a home.

And being in this home, looking back at the other homes on which I bid, I feel lucky, grateful, and blessed.

After submitting a losing bid in a 28-offer melee on a building lot in Chaplin Estates, for a house that eventually sold for almost 45% over the list price, my wife and I were crossing our fingers so bad that it hurt, hoping another building lot would hit the market.

This was around the first week of February, 2017, and while many of us working the real estate market knew that something was going on, we sure didn’t know that we’d be looking back at January, February, March, and April of 2017 as the craziest four-month period, possibly on record.

Having watched the builder’s lot in Chaplin sell for 47% over the list price, I was certainly feeling naive for my previous over-confidence.  Was the lot that sold in 2016 just a downright steal?  Is there any reason for the market to, at least on paper, appreciate close to 48% in nine months?

When I was told that a couple of empty-nesters bought the lot to build their dream home, after their kids had moved on (which is unique, but kudos to them…), I felt slightly less awful for being a loser.  Oh, and I don’t mean a loser in general, like the kind of guy that collects antique swords, and buys graded hockey cards through online auctions with his Dad, but rather a real estate loser.  At least, I think…

I swear, it wasn’t more than two weeks after this experience that I was walking through my office one afternoon when I saw an image on our a monitor in the marketing/graphics room, and I did a double-take.  I was drawn into the room like a tractor-beam had ahold of me.

“What is that?” I asked the young man at the table, and he said, “Oh, this is Kim’s new listing.”

“Let’s see,” I told him, as I pulled up a chair and got comfy.

“Um, I’m not really supposed to….” he started, before I gave him that look, and he started clicking through the images.

This house was absolutely gorgeous.

Red-brick.

Georgian.

While pillars.

Black shutters.

I didn’t even need to see the inside of the house, I was in love.

But then when I saw a photo of the wood-panelled office on the main floor, the open concept kitchen and family room, and the man-cave in the basement, I was lusting for this place.

I called Kim (not her real name, obviously) and said, “What in the world is that house you’ve got for sale?”

She said, “Oh yeah, Fleming?  You like that?  And here I thought you were building a house,” and she stressed the word “building” with a pouty sound, since she and I have had many conversations about houses in the past, and she always challenged my stance on building.

Having built several homes herself, Kim had always told me, “Fleming, just buy a goddam house.  You’ll go nuts building.  It’ll consume you.  It will kill your business, and you and Jenna will kill each other!”

I always told Kim that no house would be “perfect” for me, and I wasn’t looking to dive into a haystack, searching aimlessly for a needle.

So how ironic was it that Kim happened to be listing the perfect house, and I had to make the call to her, asking if I could get in before it would hit the market?

I took my wife to see the house two days later, and I basically crawled on my hands and knees, up the driveway, up the front steps, and landed at Kim’s feet.  “It’s okay, Fleming, just because you’re #1 doesn’t know you know everything.  Now step into your new home!”

Kim is a friend.  She was at my wedding.  She didn’t need to bullshit me; she was going to sell this house regardless, and interestingly enough, she told me it must go to market, and there would be no pre-emptive offers.

I was in love with the house.  So was my wife.

There were things I didn’t need, like a pool, for example.  I’m not a swimmer.  Never was.  In fact, at 39-years-old, I still plug my nose when I jump in the water.  I know you’ll laugh, and say, “God, just blow out your nose, you’ll be fine!” but I promise you, it’s never worked out for me.  Those of you with pools will swear by them, but I never really wanted one.  I figured, “What the heck, maybe my kids will be the swimming enthusiasts that my wife and I never were?”

And there was one other thing about the house that kept this from being perfect: you could feel the subway.

Kim told us, “You can only feel it from the basement, and only if you really listen for it,” but that’s something that the seller told her, which the seller told herself.

I mean, come on.  You guys know how this goes.  “You’ll get used to it.”

That’s what everybody says about a feature of their house that they want, so badly, to believe that they will, in fact, get used to.

My wife and I were in love with the house, so we didn’t care.  Jokes aside, we probably would get used to the ever-so-slight, 4-second vibration in the basement, and given this was going to be my man-cave, I didn’t think I’d ever have a quiet moment down there.

We decided to forego building a house, after all that.

Here we were, ready to go all-in on a five or six-year-old custom home, and in a completely different area, I might add!  Yes, this was still on the Yonge line, but north of Eglinton!  Who knew I possessed the ability to be flexible on anything in life?

A week later, the property hit the open market, and I was even more excited.  So was my wife.

But a few days later, I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking I was hearing something.  A buzz?  A car idling outside?

I think I was somewhere between a dream, and perhaps my subconscious asking me, “Do you really want to live in a house that vibrates every five minutes?”

So I went back to the house with my friend and business partner, Chris, and like a lunatic, I spent an hour yelling “SSSSHUSH!” every time he said, “Dude, you can’t hear anything in this house,” and then I proceeded to listen more carefully. The good friend that he is, I asked him to go to the basement and send me a text message as soon as he hear the subway, so I could be in the master bedroom listening.

We played this game for about ten minutes, and I heard nothing.  Or was it something?  To this day, I’m still not sure.

Our game was rudely and/or timely interrupted by none-other than the sellers themselves, who came home a few minutes before our showing time had ended.

And that was the end of the game, and about the time I said, “Alright, I can live with this,” and decided to move forward.

By this point in our home-buying journey, I had retained the services of my long-time friend and mentor, who we’ll call Jack, to present any further offers on behalf of myself and my wife.  As I noted in Monday’s blog, and as some of the readers pointed out, even agents who give good advice 100.00% of the time to their clients can fall victim to the same pitfalls as naive buyers.  I needed a cold, calculated, brutally-honest, seasoned veteran of the industry to grab me by the collar, and lead me through the city.

On the day of offers, Jack told me that Kim would likely have her own offer from a buyer she pulled from the open house.

The idea of “multiple representation” doesn’t sit well with much of the general public, and as I’ve mentioned on occasion here on TRB, I won’t represent a buyer, in competition, on one of my listings, but there is a way for an agent to do it fairly if he or she wants.

There were seven offers on offer night, and Kim presented to her clients first.

Jack watched the process carefully, as did the other agents presenting.

Our broker/manager was in the room with Kim and the sellers when she presented, and he remained on site as the other buyer agents went through and presented, one at a time.

I felt very good about our offer this time around, and with their “only” being seven offers, I knew that two would be throw-aways, two would be in the middle, and three of us would be serious.  My price was absurd, in my mind, and Jack agreed that it was going to win us a gold or silver medal when all was said and done.

I was on the phone with a friend when I saw Jack come down the stairs here at 290 Merton Street.

It had only been about fifty minutes since presentations had started, and I figured this was a great sign!

But Jack gave me a look.  This was a look I had seen before.

In 2004, when I first started in the business, I went out on a “first date” with a girl here at the office who was very chummy with both myself and Jack.  If anything, he goaded the two of us, like we were at the middle school dance, afraid to reach out and ask if the other person wanted to awkwardly hold each other to Stairway to Heaven while avoiding eye contact.

On the Monday morning after our first date, she came downstairs and made conversation, at which point Jack came out of his office and said, “Come here, girl,” and pulled her into his office.  They chatted, laughed, and spent a few minutes in there with the door closed, clamouring away.

The door opened, she came out, smiled, and said she’d see me later, and then walked off.  I immediately looked to Jack with eager, optimistic eyes, and he just flashed me this look.

“It ain’t happening, kid,” Jack said to me, as my heart sank into my stomach.

That same look – a quick close of the eyes, downward head-tilt, and subtle nod of the head – was the one Jack was giving me now as he approached.  All that was missing was the “ain’t happening” part.

“I’m sorry Dave,” Jack told me.  “Kim had it, right out of the gates.”

I sank into my chair.

My wife and I had already started decorating that house in our minds, and now the idea that not only was the house going to somebody else, but that we had to start our search anew, just crushed me.

“It’s done?  Like done-done?” I asked Jack.

“You never had a chance,” Jack said.  “None of you did.  Kim had it.  She had you all beat.  Right out of the gates.  The other presentations were just a formality.  Her offer was that good.”

And to her credit, Kim did have it all along.  She played fair, presented first, and her buyer clients offered a whack of money above what the two of us at the top did, since I was in a tie for second with another bidder.  It wasn’t even close.

“It’s just a house,” Jack told me.  “There will be another one.”

In 2004, when my naive, young heart was aching because a girl from the office didn’t like me after one date, Jack said, “Boy, give your head a shake.  Ain’t nothing there.  I’ve been around a long time, and girls like that are a dime a dozen.”  To add context, Jack is a very sassy gay man with more life experience than anybody I’ve ever met.  I don’t know if he’s every been wrong about anything, in the sixteen years I’ve known him.

The worst part about losing this house was calling my wife.

“We didn’t get it,” I told her, and she lost it.  Immediately, she fell apart.

I can still hear her words: “Get it back!”

I felt powerless in that moment.  Completely impotent.

There was nothing I could do, and I felt like I failed my wife.

Trust me when I say that my wife is a simple person, of humble needs, and her “Get it back” shouldn’t be taken out of context.  It was in the moment.  She was literally holding our four-month-old daughter, looking at our nursery in the condo, coming to the realization that the nursery she had envisioned in our new house, all day, would never be.

When I came home, she apologized.  She said she didn’t want to put pressure on me, or cause me to make a financial decision that would hurt us.  She too said, “There will be another house.”

The market wasn’t kind to us through the rest of February, and all of March.

In fact, it wasn’t until the end of April, ironically after the market had cooled down, looking back in hindsight, that we found our next option.

This house was bigger than the previous one, and in an area that was far more spread-out.  The demographic was older, and the area was more car-dependant.

It was, looking back on it now, completely and utterly wrong for us, in every way.

But at the time, I was all-in.

This house had everything I wanted, and more.  There was a formal, traditional dining room at the front of the house, with wainscoting and crown moulding.  There was a wood-paneled office “for two,” as my colleague Chris joked with me when he came to see it.  The kitchen was gorgeous, and opened to a wonderful family room.  The man-cave was on point.  The master ensuite closet was bigger than the last house.  And there was yet another pool – and even a small cabana!

I convinced myself that this was right for me, right for my wife, perfect for my family, and exactly what we needed.

My wife was unsure from the get-go, but she loves me, she trusts me, and she told me once again, “So long as Maya and I are happy here, and can make a life, then that’s all I need.”

I brought the guys from my office to see it, and we were completely enamoured.  The listing agent was there, and I remember asking him out on the back patio, “What’s the deal with all the Kitec plumbing in the basement?  Any issues?”

For those of you that don’t know, “Kitec” plumbing is like the new knob-and-tube wiring, which is to say that insurance companies act like the world is going to end if they don’t get rid of it.  Every single condo in Toronto has, is currently, or eventually will replace their Kitec pluming, and if you ask any home inspector, they’ll say it’s all a big con.

The listing agent at the house slowly turned to me and said, “I know nothing about this.”

I smiled, and said, “No, wait, what?  I mean the Kitec – all the in-floor radiant heat downstairs, it’s all kitec.  I’m just curious what you think.”

Again, he said, “I don’t have any thoughts on this,” and continued to smile.

I get it, I do.  He’s going to have eight offers on this house, it’s a seller’s market, and he doesn’t need to say anything to me.  He can basically tell me to go eff myself, and I’d still bid on the house.  But this left such an unsettling taste in my mouth, one which would turn far more bitter on offer night.

Jack and I went to the listing brokerage to present our offer, and this time around, there were nine bidders.

Only this time, standing in the large foyer of this listing brokerage, something felt different.  It felt off.

I looked around, and I saw something that made me feel uncomfortable.

I saw the people bidding against me.

The agents, the buyers, the whole lot of them.  They were just so different.

I suddenly felt like I didn’t “fit” in this group, and I don’t think I was nervous or just being self-conscious.  I really, truly think I didn’t belong.

Jack presented our offer, and the listing agent came out and said, “I need to talk to you, you, you, you, and, um……you.  You guys are being sent back.  The rest of you can go home, but if you choose to stick around, you’re really going to have to sharpen your pencils.”

He had pointed at Jack as one of the “you” people, and so Jack and I went upstairs to conference in my wife.

“I don’t know,” she told me.  “I just don’t know.”

There was no excitement in her voice.  No confidence.  She was flat.

“I guess……I mean I guess we could go up to the same price that we offered for the last house?” she said, more as a question than a statement.

That’s ultimately what we did, but it didn’t feel right.

We went back downstairs, and Jack presented our second offer.

I looked around the room, and folks, fault me if you want for saying this, but I’d rather be honest and be labelled offensive than be aloof – but I saw the people and the money, and I just knew I didn’t belong.  I saw mainland Chinese money.  I saw Russian money.  I saw Middle Eastern money.  I saw the cars outside, I saw the watches on the agents, I saw the furs on the female buyers, and all of a sudden, I had this epiphany: “This is so fucked up.”

What am I doing here?

I didn’t belong.

I didn’t want to belong.

I’m a simple guy who collects antique swords and buys graded hockey cards at auction with his dad!

Why was I here?

“This isn’t right,” I told Jack, who simply replied, “Okay.  Whatever you think.”

“I want out.  I want to go.” I told him.

A few minutes later, the listing agent came back out, and said, “Okay, we’re going to round three…” and that’s as far as I can remember.  I stopped listening.

I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders, I inhaled deeply, exhaled, and felt amazing.

“Grab that cheque,” I said to Jack, “I’m gonna head outside and throw up.”

Jack came out a few minutes later, and I hugged him.  “I’m sorry to waste your time,” I told Jack, and the consummate professional that he is, Jack said, “This isn’t a waste, Dave, this is a step toward getting a house for you and Jenna and Maya.  Finding out what you don’t want is part of the process.”

I promised my wife I wouldn’t call her with the news this time around, based on what had happened the first time and her reaction, so I went home and told her in person.

“We didn’t get it,” I said.

“Oh,” she replied.  “That’s okay.  I didn’t really want it.”

“Neither did I,” I told her.

Then we sat there, the two of us, plus our newborn baby, just thinking in our own two heads.  Quiet reflection.

I can’t remember who broke the silence, but I remember Jenna saying, “Maybe this isn’t working for us.  Maybe we’re not doing it right.”

I concurred, and that was the end of the conversation.  That was also the unofficial end of our search, for the time being, even though this was never really communicated.  But we were both completely on the same page.

That house – the one I didn’t want, ended up selling for about 160% of the list price, through seven, count them, s-e-v-e-n rounds of bidding.

SEVEN!

What an asshole.  That listing agent.  He kept those agents and buyers there all night, they went in-and-out, in-and-out of that ugly, tacky conference room, and in the end, the high bidder just so happened to be the agent from his office.

“He was always going to get it,” Jack told me the next day.  “What made you think differently?”

I told my Dad about the experience, and he said, “David, that’s dark money.  You can’t compete with dark money.  You’re just ‘a guy.’  You grind out your living, you pay taxes, you save what’s left.  You can’t compete with those people.  That’s dark money from ill-gotten gains.  It’s not your world.”

Maybe he’s being dramatic, but he’s not wrong, and we know there’s been no shortage of opinions on the foreign money snapping up Canadian real estate.

To this day, I still don’t know what the hell I was doing.  I felt like I had opened the wrong door, to the wrong party, but gone inside for a drink anyways.

And to this day, just as I cringe at the thought of where I’d be and what life would be like if I didn’t meet my wife, I get anxiety thinking about what would have happen if we’d actually bought that house.  I honestly think I would have gone broke.

The neighbourhood, the community, the people, the lot, the house – everything about it is just so, so wrong for us.

Of course, I would have never known this, had we not found the house we’re in now.

And I also would have never known that we wouldn’t even see another house in person for over a full year thereafter…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Written By David Fleming

David Fleming is the author of Toronto Realty Blog, founded in 2007. He combined his passion for writing and real estate to create a space for honest information and two-way communication in a complex and dynamic market. David is a licensed Broker and the Broker of Record for Bosley – Toronto Realty Group

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9 Comments

  1. Pingback: We Bought A House! (Part 2) | Real Estate News Group
  2. Pingback: We Bought A House! (Part 2) | Real Estate News Group
  3. Marina

    at 7:15 am

    I think almost buying the wrong house is a rite of passage. We had a similar experience (I mean, it was completely different, but similar in that we were relieved we didn’t get it). If we hadn’t gone through that, we may not have been as certain about the house we did buy.
    It’s nice to hear though that agents also get emotional about their own homes 🙂

  4. Max

    at 9:08 am

    Great story telling David! Thanks for the nice read. I can relate on a similar experience while looking in mid 2016. The street was packed full of luxury cars you’d think it was a dealership doing a sidewalk sale.

    1. Mike

      at 11:33 am

      “I felt powerless in that moment. Completely impotent.”

      Wow. Remind me never to accuse David of holding back! I don’t know a lot of men that would put these thoughts in writing.

  5. Jenn

    at 9:41 am

    Part one was great but this is better!! Are you going to tell us where you bought though? The story isn’t complete without all the details. Just think about it!

  6. Clifford

    at 3:05 pm

    Damn, this hits too close to home. We struck out 3 times before buying our last place. Took us 7 months of looking. At least buying new you don’t have to deal with any of this drama.

  7. Sirgruper

    at 12:23 am

    The brokerage team on house part 2 is pretty obvious from the description. I would have walked from the start if I’m right. Good move.

  8. Pingback: Top Five: Blog Posts Of 2019 | Real Estate News Group

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