How To BUY Your FIRST HOME In California (For Millennials) Ep 119

You know, when you work in real estate, you hear a lot of people spewing a lot of headlines. And one I heard for the longest time was that millennials have no desire to buy a home. They want a YOLO and FOMO and be out there in the world. And I'm all for it. You do you. But there are some millennials that want to take a different path. So many people have had so many derogatory and just straight up incorrect assumptions of about what millennials think and how they're gonna act that I was super glad to talk to this millennial and find out about her home buying journey. There's so much information in this one. I can't wait to tell you all about it. Ladies and gentlemen, let's hear the real life story from Briana. Hey. And if you're out there and you're confused about buying a home and you want to hear from real people and hear their real stories and not just listen to someone else's sales pitch like, subscribe, hit the notification bell. There's a lot of interviews that are going to be right here on this channel. Now, Brianna is in Northern California. She was listening to the podcast and reached out to me and I was like, it's pretty expensive up there, so. So tell us your story. Now, obviously you're Air Force, so you said you grew up kind of close to there, though. So what was the. What was the whole thing behind? Were you someplace else with the Air Force and then came back?

I was. So I've been in the Air force for about 10 years. I was in New Mexico for a while, then Mississippi, and then I spent the last four and a half years in Germany. So we just moved here from Germany.

Wow. Now, I'm curious. Everyone wants to know about your house, but I want to know this. Do you have a specific role in the Air Force?

I do. I'm occupational health and safety. So kind of like osha, but for the Air Force.

Oh, cool. Oh, all right. Wow. Yeah, I have some friends who do that. Home inspection with them was a little interesting.

So, yes, I was looking out for especially electrical concerns is a huge one for me. Yeah, I know a lot of checklists online to kind of help you determine the electrical safe features of your house. So that's always a really.

Okay, tell us all about it. So you're coming from Germany and then what. What was the whole reason behind you deciding to buy a home?

Yeah, of course. So we just got an assignment here to Travis Air Force Base in the Fairfield area. And I Was very excited because it was close to home and I hadn't been back home in 10 years. We also just had a son. Our son was about just turned three at the time we got the assignment. Yes, it was really nice. And from Germany and having, you know, a small family, I was thinking it would be nice to buy a house, especially since we're moving, you know, closer to home. And this was about July, so a year ago this month that we decided to look. And I'm a huge planner. So honestly, the first thing I did was do a Spotify search for real estate podcast and you popped up. And honestly, I don't think I would have bought a house if it wasn't for your podcast because I did not understand. You know, it's usually a quick thought, like, maybe it's a good idea to buy a house, but all the preparation and work that goes into that entire process. So, I mean, I listened to you in the morning when I was drinking coffee, during my lunch break, and in the evening until I kind of got an idea of, okay, can I do this?

Oh, and then at the end of every podcast, I told you, you can do this.

Exactly.

I tell everyone all the time, this is not a get rich quick podcast. It's one person at a time starting their personal plan. What were some of the first steps that you took for all our people out there who have no idea where to start?

Yeah, of course the first thing I did is grab a pencil, Honestly, because the information was such an overload that I was like, all right, let me restart the this whole experience and grab a pencil. So I think I started with, you know, that timeline piece is, do I have enough time? Right? Because we were moving in six months. So I'm like, do I have the time to even start this process right now? So I, I kind of followed your podcast and said, okay, let me start from the end and go backwards. So if I have the approval, like 30 days before I want to go into closing, this is where I'd be at. And then before that, collecting documents two weeks before that. And I actually ended up right where I was. So it was just enough time, like a six month window to do it, but I had to be very dedicated. So that went into a different checklist.

CB you're okay. I mean, for those of you listening audio, I raised my hands in excitement when she did that back calendaring. I'm a huge, huge fan of back calendaring.

I think a week, because we were in Germany to every timeframe that was projected because we knew we would have A, some hurdles buying house in the, in the end of 2021 market and B, having some hurdles with a nine hour time change.

Yeah, yeah, those are some fun phone calls when you're dealing with bankers and escrow people who at 502 you cannot get a hold of the them.

Yep. I was up, I had an alarm for midnight every night and I was up from midnight to 2am in Germany, calling people, talking, looking at houses, all of that.

Oh my gosh.

I was tired. Eight weeks.

Well, all right, you're an expert. I, I interviewed some people who did, you know, Los Angeles to Portland and I thought that was far. Tell us people who are like, I have no idea how I'm going to buy a place living out of state. You are out of country. How did you do it?

Oh yeah, I think the biggest thing was the research portion and kind of getting in the mindset of being a amateur and very low scale realtor. Right. Like what do realtors look at? What do realtors expect from the buyer? And like looking at it from that perspective allowed me to prepare and honestly be like one step ahead of my realtor. So like if she emailed me in the middle of the night for a document, I had already had it. And that made it easier for the both of us, especially during the transition and just having having those pre phone calls with like the bank and my financial institutions to make sure that like I could wire money in ahead of time so that when it came time to close there wasn't issues there too. I think those are the two big areas that helped me succeed while being in a different country.

Okay, I'm going to break those up into two for our listeners. This is so exciting for me because if you did it at home where there wasn't a time gap or there wasn't something like that, I mean you're going to be even more prepared than you were. One of the things you can do is you can ask your realtor to see a contract before you go look at a house and you like it. Ask them to say, hey, first time you meet, would you give me a contract? And then you just go home and you read it. You don't ask any questions, you just read it because they're going to fill stuff in. Great thing to do to get ahead. Also ask them, you know, especially in the 21 market, before you write an offer. Okay, what happens in the 48 hours after I write the offer? On the closing side, I can't say it enough. Be ready with all the Money, be ready for them to check hr. That's something that they do a lot. They'll call your work to make sure you don't you didn't get fired. For you, it's pretty easy. You know, the military, it's not so tough, but you know, there's a bunch of stuff that could happen right at the end and you're so busy figuring out where your moving truck is and all that. What about researching? I love that you were ready. What about researching online? Did you get your finances together first or did you do the finances and the house shopping at the same time?

Oh, no, finances came first, especially because, you know, I'm married and there's two of us to think about. So that was kind of part of the backtracking, right? So the first thing we did after getting a realtor is first find that lender and meet with them immediately and determine the average price and the average closing cost at that exact time to get the closest estimate. Another huge tip that you gave me that I loved was like looking for a local lender instead of like a mass institution. That was a huge save because the local lender was talking to us as much as we wanted to, maybe four or five times a day, which could have been a lot more difficult with a bigger company. And the fast response response allowed us to stay on schedule more often. And he gave us a checklist and you know, if you want to apply alone or if you want to apply together, this is the money that you'll need. So we actually divided that amount. Well, we added $5,000 and then divided that amount for the months that we had leading up to close. And then we, we saved every possible penny we could. And that is my best advice, honestly is even if you hit your goal, still save as much possible money because there was probably ended up being about $2,000 more than our highest. And if we didn't save that extra $2,000, we would have lost our dream house. So we had just enough money because we, we did. We canceled all our Europe trips. Like we wanted this house. We sacrificed as much as we could during that six month period and it really did pay off, man.

Oh, so many things. This is, this is amazing. The first thing the online lenders, that's now this is today, my second interview of the day that I've heard this. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The online lender, the first person you talk to on the phone is going to really make you think they're really exciting. You never talk to that person again. They're just a salesperson. When you deal with your local lender, they're there for you, you know, and the great thing is, you know, sometimes if they're available, they'll text you back at 9 o' clock at night or before they go to bed, which for you was the middle of the day.

So whatever it was.

We also just been talking to a lot of people. I've been asking people what that, what happened after they moved in, what was important. You seem like a pretty frugal, like, planning person, but. So this was a dream house and you decided to stretch because you found one that you went, okay, this one we're, we're going to go for.

Actually, that process was really fast. We started looking at houses in October and like five weeks ago in we, I still wasn't in love with anything in particular. And I mean, having like 20 buyers to a house ended up being very discouraging as well. I had an idea of my dream house, of course. Like, I drew a picture, I wrote down the features so we were prepared. But I have such high expectations that I wasn't expecting to find that house, especially because it's our first house. Right. Like you a little bit in your podcast about, you know, kind of setting some reasonable expectations for your first house. And I was doing that. I had the picture, but, you know, it wasn't going to be the end goal or the all or nothing. But around like the first week of December when I was like, we just need to buy a house. This house came up. And if I could stress anything, it would be that it was the dream house. It had everything and more something that I didn't even think was possible. And it just felt almost like fate.

Here's where I have like the devil and the angel on my shoulder. I want to make sure that everyone is very understanding. I hear a couple different things after people close. One is, boy, there were expenses I weren't ready for. And the other thing is, I wish I'd stretched and we got the extra bedroom because it's only an extra $300 a month. And it's three, four years later and I got a promotion and now we have to call David and sell this house and we could have stayed here another five years. I don't want anybody to be house poor. But your story is great. And the reason is if you are approved for a loan, as long as you're not spending frivolously, the bank looks at you more with more scrutiny than you look at yourself. Know that that's okay. If you stretch for it. And then if you have your dream scenario, then you go for it, and you stretch for it. Who knows if you're going to find that thing that has everything plus more? And all that frustrating time that you were out there, it was worth it. Because when you saw that one that was so much extra, it was probably a lot easier to stretch because you realized if you just bought that house, when you said, I don't care. Buy any house, you're like, wait, this is only a couple hundred bucks more than that. Go, go, go.

I definitely agree. That's exactly how I felt. And, you know, you have to ask yourself to, too, because some people don't want to use that entire approval amount, and I read that a lot. But you have to ask yourself, like, can you live with a little bit less? Like, cancel that one extra trip a year. Is your dream house really worth it? And for us, it was like, we've traveled the world. We want some place to raise our son that we love, and it was totally worth it to us to just live a little bit less extravagantly because our house, to us, is the extravagance. Right? Like, having that sanctuary is all you really need. It feels like a vacation every single day that you wake up and come home from work, like, having that's important. And I think that what got me here, too, was my unicorn realtor, because she kept saying, if you don't love it, don't make the offer. Because I was putting too much stress on myself thinking that we were getting too close to the time frame of, you know, sticking to those frames that I set for myself. And she said, you know, I always think that the right house will come. I don't know why, but that's how it works. It's always worked that way. So if you really aren't in love with it, just wait a little bit longer. And I listened to her, and I trusted her, and she led me to this. So I was very thankful for that.

That's incredible. I'm trying to let all my listeners know now you closed what month we.

Closed in like, a week or three days before Christmas. Wow.

So, you know, even in the holiday slowdown, when you were putting offers in around Thanksgiving, that time of Thanksgiving 21 was hectic.

It really was. And people were saying sellers, like, they didn't want inspections. They, you know, wanted high offers and low contingencies. And the. The most. Most stressful part was they wanted really short escrow periods. They wanted 20 days for this house. And if we didn't do that prep work. We would have not been able to put that in our offer letter. That we could do a 20 day closing. And the two reasons why we did a 20 day closing and got this house where we were prepared and we had a local lender that was totally on board with it because they weren't bid by policies like that bigger companies could be restricted under.

Okay, she listens to me three times a day when she was getting ready for this. If this is your first time listening, find the rewind button on your podcast player. Rewind and listen to that again and again and again. You heard me clapping in the background there. Yes, yes, yes. The more prepared you are, the more options you have. The more options you have, the better chance you get. The dream house you can, you can close in 20 days if you have the right team working for you. You can be able to offer that if that's what the seller is asking. Demanding in this market. And the fact that you had your local lender working for you, that's so incredible. I think you've given everybody the understanding of what to do for. To prepare is were there any other pitfalls, Were there any surprises? Sounds like you. You prepped a lot. Way too much of me.

It was totally worth it though. Such a stressful period. I was stressed, so I couldn't imagine having more stress by being ill prepared. But I think the biggest thing, like we even closed five days early. That's how much we got our stuff. Stuff in. And the lender was on point and the realtor as well. The. I think the biggest hiccup or thing that I was surprised about was people not doing inspections and making offers. That threw me way off. I didn't think it was going to be that competitive. And also in the Bay Area, people offering cash outright for property really messed up the middle class that doesn't have that. And the other big hurdle that I wasn't prepared for is, or thought I wouldn't be prepared for was having the. During the offer that amount that you.

Want to your earnest money deposit.

Earnest money deposit, yes. So when I listened to that episode, I set a little bit more aside so that we can do that. That really helped. And if I didn't have that, I think I would have been in trouble making an offer.

While you're saying all this stuff, as much as I'm getting excited that listeners are learning and they're going to avoid problems, I also just keep replaying in my head you talking about coming home to this place that makes you and the family so happy.

So it's totally worth it, really is.

For everybody who is getting ready to get out there. Remember, every market has, has good things and bad things. You had to deal with a lot of competition. All that frustration you had during that competition, you still found the dream house. So the people right now are saying to me, this is so hard because interest rates went up and it costs more. It's never going to be perfect. Either it's going to be cheap and everybody's going to be going after it, or it's going to be a little bit more expensive. But the moral is, do your homework, get ready, and then wait until you find it.

Definitely. And a lot of people expect perfect situations, right, but. And nothing's perfect, especially something worth fighting for. There's always going to be that thing that discourages you. And, you know, getting offers denied was discouraging. But looking back, if I could tell myself that, you know, it just wasn't the right house. It just wasn't meant to be. Just keep preparing and keep strong, that would have really helped me reduce my stress. Because in reality, the timeframes were so tight. This house went on the market on a Thursday and they wanted to pick an offer by Monday morning. So there was four days to get in. So if we did it right, we were going to be one of the few offers because people will come in and love the house, but they might not be as prepared as me. So really it puts me a leg up, even from people who might have more money or not low contingencies. It's because I got my documents in and was ready to buy this house. That really sets you apart in those situations.

You were ready to go all in. Thank God you had the extra couple grand. I mean, I've had people that have, you know, called the uncle they haven't talked to in 10 years. You know, when they get that perfect, I need 2500 bucks and then we'll pay you back in the next three months. But I just need to cover this little appraisal gap or whatever it is, you know.

Yeah, we could have waited three more months and looked, but we just, we knew we wanted the house by the end of December because the market was so volatile then. And, you know, January rolls around and interest rates were at an all time low. So we wanted to not go in an apartment. And I think the biggest motivating factor was you in my head saying, don't waste money on rents. Like that is a forced savings account. Don't do it to yourself. And that really motivated Me to. I mean, we didn't even buy Christmas presents. We got a little Charlie Brown tree and. Yeah, like we're going to do this.

Well, then you just. You just put some tinsel on yourself and run around the house. Here's our present. Here's our president.

That's exactly what my son did. He was 2, so he loved it. We had a pic. Of course, all our stuff was gone.

Man, that's going to be memories forever. If you prepare, you can get this perfect storm Brianna's talking about not only fighting the fight. I mean, think about it. What if one of those cash buyers hadn't come in on the house that you wanted that was, you know, a couple pegs below this one? It felt horrible at the time because you were prepared and you were ready to go. You know, you were ready to take something because it was going to be a for savings account, but because you had all those options, you got the best of both worlds. Now everyone's going to think that everyone's going to be able to do this and they're going to call me up and be mad at me. But the more you prepare, the better your chances.

Be realistic. Like, if you're not ready, you're not ready. But when you are ready, you're prepared. You won't be disappointed.

I'm just so thrilled. I could talk forever. But, you know, I know people probably want to stop doing the dishes or whatever they're doing while they're listening to us. Thank you for being so inspiring and really helping everybody understand. You know, when people tell me, this is so hard, I need to take a day off of work, gang, she was in Germany. Get over it. Okay?

But I understand the pain.

Yes, I love it.

Worth it. We already have equity built in the house, you know, and thank you so much for setting us up and taking the time to. To answer our emails and set us up with our unicorn real estate agent, because really, she made a difference. Trusting her and even trusting her with how much we wanted to offer and just jumping in the pool was everything, and it was just the right amount to establish a little equity. So we definitely don't regret any part of that journey at all.

There are all these articles coming out about all these new realtors that got in the game last year. A lot of my unicorn people are people that I have met over the years by going to these conferences all over the country. You know, I meet four or five hundred people a weekend. I'm only talking to about a dozen. I'm always thinking to myself, Gosh, I wish I had somebody moving from my area who was going to move to your town. And then I got the idea for the podcast a few years ago, so it's so exciting because someone like you, who deserves it, that I can go, oh, my gosh, this person that. I never had anybody in my town move to your town, but now because of the podcast, I can say, I know someone awesome there.

Yeah, exactly. It's so nice. The networking is so important to help people, you know, and by you having those contacts and networking, your reach is so much further than just, you know, Southern California. So you're really doing a lot to help people and get people to a place in their life where they feel proud of something. You know, buying a house is such a big step in your life and. And feeling that pride of being a homeowner is incomparable to anything, honestly.

Oh, that's fantastic. Oh, warm my heart. Thank you so much. All right, everybody, listen to Briana. Do what she says. I can't say any better than that. Thank you so much and enjoy your lovely home.

Bye.

That interview was just. Warms my heart, fills me up. Not much more for me to say, except to tell you, if you want to learn about buying your first home, I would just rewind video over and over again. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time on the how to buy a home YouTube and podcast. You can do this.