If you are frustrated trying to buy your first home in 2022, you are NOT alone. The current market is one of the most difficult and unpredictable for anyone trying to buy, and if you’ve been dreaming of this big step for a long time, you may be feeling like this is more of a nightmare. Are the stories true? Sure, but you’re not hearing ALL the stories. Listen in to hear how some first-time buyers are getting results in 2022 that might just be the right inspiration you need!
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Inspirational 2022 Home Buying Stories For Trying Times
First-Time Home Buyers Who Closed On Homes In 2022, And How They Did It.
2022 is the hardest, craziest, and most bizarre time to buy a home, especially your first home. I know you are hearing horror stories because they are out there, but also because drama is louder than reason. My goal is to lift your spirits with some real-life stories from people making it work, even in this bananas market. This is the one episode that I suggest that you save on your phone. If you do start to get beaten down by the ‘22 market, or who knows, maybe even the ‘23 market, go back and read this blog post. It is inspiration time.
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If you are reading this, that is either because it is your standard day where you read a blog post every time it comes out. I’m sure you have a big celebration you and your friends all get together, put your phone down, stare at it, and read it the minute it comes out. Either that is happening, or you got smackdown in the 2022 blood bath in this first-time buyer cage match, and you need some inspiration.
Here is what you came for. “Dave, thanks so much for checking in. It is going well, thanks. We have saved $7,000 since we first started talking at the beginning of 2022. We are working our way towards our down payment. I have a liability payment up for sale, and that is on the market. Hopefully, we are going to be reducing our DTI. Thanks for the check-in.” Nothing real exciting going on there, but here is what I responded to that reader.
I said, “This is amazing, way to go.” I know it is weird to hear, but sometimes I get super pumped and more excited to hear about something like this. You would think that when I hear about an offer getting accepted after 12 or 13 tries, or even somebody finally getting the keys to their first home, that would be the biggest rush in the world for me. Do not get me wrong. It is.
On some days, hearing about people finding a plan, saving $7,000 over three months, and working on DTI, when back in November and December 2021, they thought DTI was someplace to go get an Electronics degree. That pumps me up. That gets me excited. To me, that is fire. I get the rush when the starting gun goes off because I have run this race hundreds of times before, and I know what the finish line looks like.
Now we are going to keep working on that inspiration, practice practical positivity, and drown out the noise of the negativity. All the people are telling you it is not possible. This is a crazy time even to try and do it. Here is some real reader’s correspondence to help pick you up. These are real-life people. If you are out there getting your butt whooped in the savage 2022 market, here is some good stuff for you.
The reader says, “Thank you. The unicorn that you got us in contact with has been awesome. We are happy to have found your show. It has been an amazing resource.” Happy I could help. Here is another one. This is a real person. It happened, “I opened an escrow. In 2 months and 16 offers, one finally hit. Thanks, your show was a huge help.” Be persistent.
Here is another one, “David, our first meeting went well. I’m excited to work with her. My partner, Logan, and I will have a meeting with a preferred mortgage broker. Your ears must have been burning because we were talking about how relieved we are to be closing in on answers and a plan and how much easier that is going to make planning all the other areas of our life.”
It is one of the things that maybe you do not think about when you get into buying a house. You can get tunnel-focused. You forget that puts a lot of other things in motion. We can’t say this is going to be the same thing for everyone, but here is a reader who said, “I connected. He is awesome. My husband and I are loving working with him. We have an offer on the house already. We are waiting to see what happens and falls through. We are still happy because we are enjoying working with Robert. He is awesome. He even put in contact with this great mortgage broker. So far, it has been such a great experience. Thank you so much.”
[bctt tweet=”Always treat everyone with respect.” via=”no”]
“Someone else wanted you to make sure that I would continue to share this stuff. They wanted an episode like this, and I love success stories on your show. It is such an inspiration and motivator to get my button gear. I am waiting too long. I have been walking around able sleep time to get focused. I talked to one person about this, and they said that I should use their sister because she passed the test and is a realtor. I said thanks. I’m getting in touch with a unicorn realtor.”
If you are not a regular reader now, maybe you are confused. It is supposed to be how to buy a home, and you are thinking this is some inspirational, motivational, wellness show. Maybe you are confused about what the hell a unicorn is, or you are my dad. Dad has been reading my blog post since day one, guiding me and giving me pointers along the way. He always taught me about the power of positive thinking. He had posters all over the house of this company called Success Stories. It was great. There would be all these positive messages and inspirational stuff to keep in the right mindset.
The reason I quote Zig Ziglar on this show all the time is because of him. At 52 year years old in 2022, that is when I began to understand what he was teaching me, but also teaching me through his example. The guy is a rockstar of customer service. Throughout my life, his words and actions taught me how to respect the customer, “Always treat everyone with respect, and never judge anybody because you never know who could use your services someday and who might need a helping hand now.”
Finding Unicorn Realtors
Now that I said all that nice stuff, let me explain to you new readers and to my own father, who is retired and has nothing better to do than read every single episode, what the explanation of a unicorn realtor is because my dad called me and said, “I read your recent episode. That kid was great, but I got to ask you, Dave, what is the whole unicorn thing? Is that something that younger people say that I do not understand?” SMH, dad, that means I’m shaking my head.
Dad, you are my inspiration for helping people, but I seriously hope that I’m not genetically disposed to your memory power. A unicorn realtor is a magical, mystical being that combination of experience in real estate as well as compassion and someone who knows how to kick butt and got your best interest at heart. They are the perfect thing to help a first-time homebuyer, and a lot of realtors are not necessarily unicorns.
Unicorns are rare. That is why they are called unicorns. Not all realtors are created equal. These guys are the enchanted combination of someone who knows what they are doing and will take the time to guide you, the first-time homebuyer. They are your secret sauce, your personal Avenger, to help you defeat whatever crazy alien from hell the 2022 housing market is going to throw you.
Here is the story from one of my readers who decided that they were going to interview one of the realtors that were already in unicorn nation to be sure. They took the exact script from Episode 6, where I lay out the questions that you need to use when you are asking to find out if you are talking to a unicorn or a donkey with a horn super glued to their forehead.
The unicorn passed the test with flying colors because it is a unicorn, and they like rainbows. Of course, it was flying colors, and because I give you the tools, the recommendations, the things that I would do, if I had my knowledge, it was out there trying to interview to see if someone was good for a first-time homebuyer. I do not send people to donkeys with horns. I make sure the unicorns are unicorns.
In the middle of the interview, the unicorn realtor told me that she said to the people who were interviewing them, grilling them with all the questions I told them they should do. She said, “That is exactly it because I’m not like other agents. I do that on purpose.” Needless to say, the unicorn passed the test with flying colors. That means it is time for another edition of, why do we say that to pass with flying colors?
That means to pass with distinction, but why? The answer is out in the sea. The term has a nautical history. It arose from when ships would return home with their colors spelled with a U on Wikipedia, someone in Canada or Europe wrote this, and it is another word for flags, your colors. Flying to show that they had been victorious in battle. By 1700, it was being used figuratively, signifying any triumph.
Speaking of triumphant, here is another uplifting and inspiring story. This one came in. They were referred on February 22nd, 2022, “I wanted to thank you for connecting and playing unicorn realtor within a week of knowing her. My offer was accepted on the house in the area that I love. The difference a good realtor can do is incredible. Thank you from Caroline.” I know you might be reading different stuff out there, but remember, drama sells. For every single-one freak-out horror story that you hear, there are ten good stories that you did not read because of the regular good things happening are not as juicy.
Here is another one for you since it’s getting drowned out by all that drama, “David, I want to pop in and thank you for the great info you give to first-time homebuyers. Thanks to you, we found a unicorn realtor who knew the current state of the market, which helped us get our first offer accepted. We were shocked and thrilled. I keep hearing that people have to lose out on 2 or 3 homes before they realize that they cannot play it safe in this market and offer what it is supposed to.”
“Thanks to your advice and our realtors, we felt comfortable throwing everything we had at our first offer, and it worked. We were not even the highest offer, but the sellers were willing to work with us because we released some of our earnest money upfronts. The seller’s agent did not like the buyer’s agent for the higher offer. That would suck to lose a home because your agent isn’t liked. Reputation matters.”
“To top it all off, we were able to get in right before interest rates exploded by 3.9%. Our unicorn was able to get the sellers to give us $10,000 in credits for a new roof even though we said we would take it as is. She is a rock star. We closed and got to move in after a 60-day rent back just in time because our landlord told us she was raising our rent by 9%. I can’t wait to live in our own home. Thank you. Michelle.”
For the sake of complete transparency, I do want to let you guys know she did tell me that they did have to pay a $15,000 appraisal gap, which was a bummer. The appraiser used the wrong comps, but she said, “Our luck had to run out somewhere.” You see how that works. Even in the inspirational stories, it still probably took some work. This isn’t a get-rich-quick decision or losing 20 pounds by taking this one fancy pill. The last time that pills made you lose a lot of weight. It was called Fen-phen, and everybody started having heart attacks.
The Loudest Complainers
If it is too good to be true, it is too good to be true by having a good realtor, the fact that they got it over somebody else because they did not like the other realtor. They had to pay a little bit more of the $15,000 gap, but they got a $10,000 credit for the new roof, and the landlord’s raising their rent by 9%. One more little reminder in this pep talk episode, without wanting to sound too snarky. I do want to explain to you that this is a fact that I have seen 100 times with my own eyes. When it comes to buyers out there, the loudest complainers about how bad the market is, how useless realtors are, or how terrible and experienced they had.
[bctt tweet=”Never judge anybody because you never know who could use your services someday and who might just need a helping hand right now.” via=”no”]
The loudest ones are quite often the same people who are skeptical in everything they do in life, especially working with realtors, because they understand that anybody can be a realtor, and they think they are smarter than them. That is probably right in a lot of ways. I understand that. What happens is they end up picking the person who is going to bend over backward for them to their every whim, probably because that realtor is desperate and they are not going to have the expertise to help them.
Now here is the weird part about those folks. I agree with them. I agree that anyone can be a realtor, but choosing the quality advocate matters, especially in this market. The buyers who are too smart for their own good and love to bitch and moan the loudest, and the people who keep talking. They want you to dive into their vet of negativity about how unfair the market is, the cash buyers are ruining everything, the system is rigged, the realtors are dumb, or the sellers are stupid, and they will complain loudly and frequently.
Before you believe their evaluation of the market, if they did not have unicorn representation because they were uninformed about the process, they were touched arrogant, or they were ignorant, not in a bad way, not knowing any better way. That is fine. Think about what our previous reader said about the higher offer that did not get accepted because the listing agent did not like the buyer’s agent with the higher offer.
When you hear those other buyers complain, take it with a grain of salt. Why do we say that grain of salt? The hypothesis of the phrase’s origin includes plenty of the elders’ neutralist historia regarding the discovery of a recipe for an antidote to a poison. In the antidote, one of the ingredients was a grain of salt. Threats involving the poison with us to be taken with a grain of salt and, therefore, less seriously there. Do you feel smarter? Cool.
A Buyer’s Agent
Let’s keep going with the practical positivity because now you feel smarter. Let’s make you feel happier. In this correspondence, the reader said, “Dear David or whoever this is. At the end of it, I want to make sure you are real.” My answer back was, “I’m real.” This buyer said to me, “If I buy from an individual, my current landlord selling my home of one of my properties, not using a selling agent, is it necessary for me to get a buyer’s agent?” My response since I have got a show catalog that is huge. I told her to go read to Episode 63. I’m buying without a representative yourself as a buyer, not good for buyers. It usually only benefits the seller.
They came back to me and said, “I want to let you know I did find a unicorn realtor. I took your advice, and I decided not to trust my landlord on his FSBO. That is For Sale By Owner. Are there any questions that I can use for interviewing my lender?” I responded back. I said, “Here is what the show can offer. I do not like to overpromise and tell you a whole bunch of things that I can answer all these questions.”
“I stick to what I like to offer, which is what I can offer with total confidence. I’m confident in my unicorn realtors, but the main thing that I’m giving is free information on how to prepare you best to buy a home. I can recommend established professional local realtors, but those unicorn realtors will be the ones that will recommend you to local vendors, such as mortgage brokers and lenders.”
“It is too many people all over the place for me to keep track of to be able to refer you to the best mortgage broker out there as well. I’m not going to recommend your best electrician or painter roofer to you, but the relationship between the unicorn realtor and the lender is the most important thing.” They responded back, “Perfect. That is the path that I’m on. I can’t express to you my gratitude.” I said, “Super rad.”
She came back one more time. She said, “David, things are going great. I have an inspection on home now. We learned that the seller needs to own the home for 90 days in order for us to qualify for an FHA loan.” Yes, that is something. The owner has to be in the house for 90 days. If you are trying to buy it with an FHA loan, that means most of the time with FHA, you are not going to be able to buy a flip, but read this.
“Fortunately, we live in a small town, and he was willing to hold it until the 90-day mark for us. Fingers crossed, we will close by the end of April 2022.” This email came in. “David, I can’t express my gratitude towards you and your show enough. We are in the underwriting phase of buying our house. We have projected a closed date of May 6th, 2022. It has only been a few months since we decided to even think of being homeowners.”
Do you know how many times I have heard that? People get curious one day, they pop on the show, and a couple of months later, they are buying a house. That is the difference between what people used to do, where they walk into an open house and talk to a realtor. The realtor and the buyers end up emailing back and forth and talking. Everyone is trying to do everything on their own because no one is steering the ship, but now you are here, and you have got a guide.
She said, and this is my favorite part, “Our mortgage payment will be $200 less than the going rate for rent in our area. We are going to have immediate equity in the home. Without all the information and encouragement you have provided for us on the show and our amazing unicorn team, this process would have been stressful. We are doing this. I honestly do not think I could have done this until I heard your show.” I said, “You are a rockstar. I copied and pasted our entire correspondence, and I put it in the show.”
A Quick Warning On Big Banks
I know this is the inspirational episode, but I had to drop in one warning. For those of you who think that a big bank, because you have an establishment with them, your parents have an established with them, or you have gotten money in the bank that it is still a better option than a mortgage lender. I want to give you some quick little warnings.
I’m not saying that this is an ironclad rule. It is just a heavy suggestion because I have some unicorn realtors out there who have successful relationships, and they swear by their big bank lender. The big banks are Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo. Those lenders who do great jobs at those banks are the exception to the rule and that is because they are exceptional people. They have more hoops, red tape, and crap they have to do to get stuff done.
There are people there that do a good job. Some unicorn realtors are loyal to those unicorn lenders, but in general, mortgage brokers can always get you pretty much the same thing as most big banks and offer you a ton of more options. They will be able to give you everything else that the banks do, they do not keep banker’s hours, and they have far better customer service most of the time. In this inspirational episode, here is a little warning.
This is a text between a unicorn and me. The unicorn said to me about a buyer he had that was getting ready to close, “We are almost closing. The lender had to push it back to Thursday, but we are staying on top of them.” You got to love BOA. I wrote back, “No, I do not, and you can’t make me.” He said, “Me either, but the buyer wanted to go with them. Now his closing is delayed. I’m not trying to say that we told you so. I have never had them close on time.” This is a unicorn who sells a lot of houses.
[bctt tweet=”The relationship between the unicorn realtor and the lender is the most important thing.” via=”no”]
Reading Red Flags
Finally, here are two more stories that are inspirational but a little sad. There is some rough stuff in here, but I want you guys to learn from this. You could be inspired by what you need to do in the future. Let’s play a game. Every time you read something that does not sound like the buyer is getting the best representation or advocacy, say unicorn. Dad, you can say Kirkcock. That was an inside joke for my pops. No one will understand it. Everyone out there does the same thing. Say unicorn, raise your hand, be the weird guy at the gym, doing curls, going, “Unicorn.” Yell it out when you read the red flags.
This one, I know you are going to read some red flags because this is how I started my email response back to this person. I said, “I’m glad you found me. Let’s talk about this.” I responded to this. She said, “Interest rates have doubled since I was pre-approved. My lender said no a few times when I asked her to qualify me fully after reading your blog post.”
“They are saying they did not want to run my credit multiple times. Although I think I can lose a few points on my credit again from your show.” Her credit score is 800, “Now, folks are telling me I should have been locked into my rate. I was told I could not lock into my rate until an offer was countersigned. Is that true, or did I miss out on the 2.785 where I had initially gotten quoted?”
How many times do you guys yell in public? My response was not all caps, and it went like this, “Your lender should have been consulting with you the whole time you were shopping. Technically yes, your offer can’t lock the rate until you have an offer accepted, but you should have been updated several times. In 2.78, that was many months ago.”
In the same email, she continued with this, “My realtor told me that there is no such thing as a bank waving the appraisal cap for the loan. My jargon might be off on that, but I read your blog post, and I brought it up with many of the other offers that we made were $35,000 over the appraisal, which would have been pocket for me, but I still was not getting any bites.” Long story short, on a day two and round three, after her telling two listing agents that I would not see the home without an appraisal contingency. Good, but maybe harsh.
She finally goes, “It happens, but you can’t do that. You need 20% down. You have already triggered my Spidey senses by telling me all these other things in the show, but with this lender and realtor pair, I’m taking it all with a grain of salt. I would like direct answers to these questions I’m asking. Is that a real thing? I understand it may always not be sensible who wants to pay over the value of the home, but is it only possible if you have 20% down?” I hope people are staring at you wherever you are now because you should have been yelling unicorns or raising your hand. My answer was all I said in all caps was wrong, that Spidey senses were correct.
Here is the last one. This one said, “David, my husband and I are trying to buy a house. We already have a realtor. She was recommended to us by our financial advisor, but the more I read your blog post, the more I question whether they are a unicorn realtor. Here is a few examples of our experience so far. Number one, you say all the time that you need to have a plan. I feel like we do not have one. We have been working with this realtor for over a year, but not because that was part of the plan.”
I’m cheating now. You should be screaming unicorn and raising your hand. You can’t work with someone for a year and not buy a house in an appreciating market. How much money has this realtor cost, this poor person? I’m going to continue, “I know there is low inventory, especially in the starter home price range, but I can help wonder if she could be doing more to help us.” She could be doing a lot more. She could be saving you tens of thousands of dollars because the market has gone up much in 2021.
I’m going to read through everything else real fast. Yell unicorn when you read bad stuff. “The monthly payment is important to me. Our realtors do not seem to understand that. She keeps indicating that we should be at houses with higher prices even though she said once that she does not understand why I’m stuck on the monthly payment. To me, that is the most important factor. I do not even want to look at a home before I do a quick check with the mortgage broker to find out the monthly payment and make sure it is in the right price range. Taxes are great, so I’m not sure how else I would know if we could afford the property or not.”
“Number three, I do not know if this is always how it works, but she set me up on search criteria, and we receive automatic notifications when the properties are available in that criteria. One day, I noticed that we had not received any notifications in a while. I contacted her and came to find out that her realty company had switched systems, and she said, ‘I will get you set up on the new system.’”
“I have no clue how long we were not in the new system, but how many homes did we miss out on? Why didn’t she contact us? Why didn’t she automatically switches over to the new system and tell us about it? Would she have even noticed if I had not called? This did not give me a good feeling. I’m feeling a bit frustrated aside to browse around the new app manually thinking that there might be locations we had not considered.”
“My husband and I found plenty of houses in our price range listed in other areas that we browsed various listings for an hour. When we talked to the realtor, we explained that we did not have a set location in mind, and we are pretty flexible. We prefer more rural areas with privacy, but it baffles me why she did not suggest any of these locations we found in the app. Instead, she encouraged us to look at this larger city, Albany, which is not rural at all.”
“She called the other day to ask if we were still interested in buying a house and if anything had changed. I told her yes, nothing had changed as far as how much we wanted to spend. She said interest rates are going up. That was it. At this point, it would have been nice if she had offered some suggestions to what we can do, or things to think about, like all the things I read on your blog post, but she did not.”
That is the end of that letter. How many times did you yell unicorn? The positive part of these last two stories is that you can take this as a word of caution and heed of advice. When you even begin to start to know about feeling any twinge, anything like that, avoid it. Avoiding pitfalls is what we are here to help you with.
You read all the success stories. I’m not even going to go into all the things that were wrong there because it would be a whole other episode. I know that you know from reading the blog post what things you deserve. It is the reason I started the show. You deserve better service than that. You deserve the right service for first-time homebuyers.
The Exception To The Chaos
Let’s end on a positive note. I’m going to be interviewing more readers who closed on homes and won the bidding wars. That is the stuff you want to avoid, the stories I told now, but the beginning of the stories that you want to hear about. I’m going to help tell you those because I know that everywhere else in the world, you are going to read the negative stories and the drama because the drama sells, and negative is louder than happy endings.
[bctt tweet=”The drama sells, and the negative is louder than happy endings.” via=”no”]
Trust me. I’m here to speak the truth. If things change and the market starts to get hairy for you, I’m going to drop those truth bombs. I will let you know when things are falling apart. That is my promise, but now, I can tell you if you feel like something is shifting, it is not. It is the negatives getting louder. When you hear one person sell one story, ask yourself, were they prepared? Do they have different standards than I do? Spoil alert. The answer is yes. We pretty much all have different standards. What type of advocacy or representation did they go to war or with?
Here are some stats for you that can’t be disputed and will keep positive vibes going for you. In 2021, in the 3rd and 4th quarters, the actual data and statistics on the buyer demand were lower than at any time in 2022. All this year, 2022, buyer demand has been higher than in 2021, which means it was easier to buy a home in 2021, the last couple of quarters. The inventory in 2022 has dropped significantly, meaning there were a lot more homes for sale at the end of 2021, in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
Why am I telling you that? Here is why I’m giving you that indisputable data and those facts. My readers grow at a pretty steady pace with the usual number of people coming in and out when they need this content. We had quite a few readers close in 2021 with all those stats and data I gave you when it was easier for first-time homebuyers. A lot of them close in the 3rd and 4th quarters.
In 2022, when the data shows that it is appreciably more difficult to purchase a home, especially for a first-time homebuyer, we are not even to April 2022. We have already matched the number of first-time homebuyers who have purchased a home and told me about it here at the show that we did for all of 2021. That means people are finding good advice. They are reading, getting more prepared, and people are doing it.
The next time your 2 out of 4 friends are saying that buying a home is miserable and impossible. I have a larger sample size for you. My hundreds of data points are more accurate than your social media algorithm or the survey taken at the last party that you went to. I’m here to help you practice practical positivity and trust in the real data.
I understand that probably for me, my blog post reader numbers might be skewed a little bit because the show is giving away all the inside secrets on how to succeed, and they were straight they are. Relish in the fact that you will be the exception to the chaos because you have the how to buy a home power. The invisibility cloak of knowledge, the infinity gauntlet with magic stones of insider tips, a lightsaber made of education and empowerment, plus some sick Jedi training that bad boy Skywalker precision.
I do not end every show with my positive affirmation because it is my catchphrase. The first time I said it in a show, it was an accident. I said it because I was trying to make sure that you understand that it is true with the right guidance and education. Tom Brady does not go, get ready to start a game, and think he might win. He knows he can because he put in the work like you are doing now. You can do this.
Important Links
- How To Interview And Choose A Realtor Specifically For You – Previous episode
- FISBOs And Zillow Zestimates – Why They Both Suck For First Time Home Buyers – Previous episode
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
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