Blog one: Our Story

It all begins with an Idea. Welcome to my first blog, I will taking real life experiences in Real Estate that I have had and hopefully they help you in the process of buying or selling a home. My first story is going to be a doozy. It’s my own story. Let’s go back to late 2018, my Wife (then girlfriend) Andrea and I were renting the home I grew up in from my Parents as they recently moved to Northern Wisconsin when my dad retired. We decided we wanted to start looking for our first home around January of 2019. Our first step? GET PRE-APPROVED. I can’t stress enough that this should always be your first step when buying. The hardest thing is watching HGTV and seeing these young couples be able to spend 1 million on a home and they work part time. Okay just kidding they all probably can afford something in that price range but when you are in the real life and are looking for a home you want to know what you can afford. You may have champagne taste but a beer budget. So STEP ONE, find a lender that you feel comfortable working with, ask questions, feel them out. The biggest question I get is “Won’t my credit score drop more if I keep talking to different lenders to get pre-approved?” The answer is technically no. You have about 2 weeks after your first hard pull to shop around with lenders. With myself being in Real Estate I have worked with quite a few lenders and have a specific few that I love working with and have a good connection. We contacted my friend and Lender Nick Gundrum of Provisor to do ours. I am glad I did that! This story gets crazy so hold on to your butt! So we eventually got Pre-Approved for about $200k so that gave us a decent amount to go find a home. Lets backtrack a bit, we bought a HUGE sectional couch before buying a home and we had to measure that for when we went to look at homes it would fit in the living room…. I suggest don’t buy furniture until you have a home people that was one of our hardest parts of finding a home. Our priorities in a home wasn’t much, I needed a good garage, driveway because I have way too much stuff, nice yard for our 2 Doxies Paul and Joel and a good neighborhood. We looked at quite a few homes in the Southeastern Milwaukee area and we finally found one in Mid April 2019. Guess where?! About 2 blocks from the home we were renting! Also at the time one of my best friends was buying the home right behind us and our other best friend lived across the street, it was a dream come true! The home was a 3 bed 2 bath Ranch listed at $199,000 and at the time the market was pretty crazy. We had about 30 minutes to look at the home and had to get an offer in that evening. The home needed quite a bit of updating so we actually came in at $190,000 as I felt that was a strong offer for the home. That night I couldn’t sleep because I wanted to make sure we would get the home so at about 3am I sent over a Counter Offer of $195,000 and no Inspection(this bit us in the butt, keep reading to find out). Having no inspection is always risky and I never suggest it to buyers but I knew to get the home we needed to be aggressive. That next day we received a call from the Listing Agent saying they accepted our offer so we got to work! NEXT STEP? We sent over the offer to Nick to get the lending process going. This is when it gets good. We were scheduled to close June 10th 2019, In April Motocross season started and I couldn’t be more excited to race again! On May 13th 2019 during the middle of our home buying process I had the worst Motocross accident I have ever had. I ended up in the hospital for about 6 days with both feet broken, I severed an Artery in my hip and was internally bleeding for about 24 hours and severely torn tissue in my back and pelvis. Lenders always say “Don’t quit your job or buy a car” when you are buying a home, Nick never told me not to basically half ass die in the hospital. During this time I was out of working and with no income coming in I was very concerned about us loosing the home due to financing. But here is the kicker, we had a Lender that I trusted and knew could get it done. During my stint in the Hospital my mom was in contact with Nick to get anything he needed and it worked out. On June 10th we closed on our first home. There was a bit of water issues in the basement so we were able to get a Seller Credit for the repairs. Now fast forward to that afternoon, We turned on the dishwasher in the kitchen, due to us not having an inspection we did not have confirmation that everything worked properly. Well it didn’t it flooded our kitchen… Moral of the story, IF YOU ARE BUYING A HOME, ALWAYS HAVE AN INSPECTION DONE! They cost on average $350-$500 depending on if you have Radon testing done. It’s cheaper than the $800 we spent on a new dishwasher. We have been in the home for almost 4 years now and it’s been great, we have updated alot and I will make some more blogs down the road on those fun times. I will be posting a blogs pretty frequently so if you made it this far I appreciate it! Blogs will be about everything real estate and my life. I’m super excited to share these stories with you!

Happy Housing!

Realtor Royce