A trustworthy realtor is key when buying a first home. After learning that we only had a budget of 200K, our first realtor in Portland advised us to drive until we qualified. It was over a Zoom call (as was the fashion during the Pandemic,) so our business with this realtor didn’t go any further. We both knew that 200K wasn’t going to get us what we wanted in Portland, even with the historically low interest rates of 2021.
But we took their advice, and over the next several months we put thousands of miles on our car. During the week we’d check out houses on Zillow and Redfin, making Saturday appointments with realtors. We kept an open mind, with our only real parameters being that we wanted to stay within a day’s return drive of our one-bedroom apartment in Portland.
Coastal Oregon: High Tides & Flood Zones
We had always loved the Oregon Coast, so our first few trips brought us to towns like Astoria, Seaside, and Manzanita. Most of the houses we saw within our price range were either in flood zones or serious fixer-uppers. While we spent some memorable weekends exploring the Oregon Coast (and ate some great seafood), we came away with the knowledge that Coastal Oregon was a better place to visit than to live – at least when looking to purchase a mid-range home.
We then explored central Oregon, staying within our one day there and back driving range, looking at houses in Sweet Home, Bend & La Pine. My job at the time was working on an emergency call line, and that summer Oregon had experienced some of the worst fires in decades. I recognized the names of many of the towns we drove through as places from which I’d advised callers to flee during the fires, and on our weekend drives signs of fire damage were all around us.
Though we saw a few maybes, the few places which sparked interest were in dubious repair, and we knew we had a limited budget when it came to paying for inspection fees. While we visited many of Central Oregon’s finer Grocery Outlets – we’d already decided that we needed to live within driving range of our supermarket of choice – we passed on every property we saw.
Because of the Pandemic, many realtors were offering virtual Zoom tours of properties, allowing us to expand our initial search to look at houses beyond our one day drive zone. We virtually explored one home in the town of Coos Bay, a gorgeous seaside place that reminded me a bit of the house from the film “The Ghost & Mrs. Muir.”
The price was quite low for a house by the sea, and we were again reminded of the value of having a trustworthy realtor. The listing had mentioned it was a fixer upper, but hadn’t mentioned another problem that we’d have only discovered in person.
“Before you come for a visit, you should know that the previous owner had quite a few cats, and towards the end of their life things got a bit out of control. Many of the wood floors may need to be replaced to get rid of the smell.”
While my wife and I are cat lovers ourselves, this wasn’t something we were prepared to deal with. We passed on the drive to Coos Bay.
Another promising Zillow tour was at a house in Klamath Falls that had looked quite promising in the Zillow ad. As the realtor walked around the house, we asked them to turn the phone towards something that caught our eye, a closet filled with bottled water.
“Is there a problem with the water in the house,” my wife asked.
The realtor only said something along the lines of the current owners “preferring bottled water,” but when we checked the address on Google Maps we saw that the house’s nearest neighbor was some sort of industrial processing plant, and next to that, a railroad. This taught us another valuable lesson in home buying: Check your property on Google Maps before going in person, and don’t forget to zoom out!
Although we’d wanted to stay in Oregon, we weren’t averse to looking into buying property in our neighboring state of Washington, where we were lucky to find an excellent and dedicated realtor named Chris Woods. Over the next few few weekends we got to know several towns along Coastal Washington, including Raymond and Aberdeen, where we found several houses within our price range that seemed moderately safe from immediate flooding.
Getting Serious: Putting down earnest money
This was the point in the homebuying process that we first got serious, putting down earnest money on a two story house in Aberdeen, birthplace of Kurt Cobain.
While we really liked the house, we pulled our offer after inspection revealed several non-negotiable issues with the place, including water damage in the basement, a leaky roof, and dodgy wiring. The wiring problem, we discovered, was the result of the property having been part of a major, multi-county illegal Cannabis operation called Operation Green Jade (you might have read about it in the news): while we didn’t buy the house, our first almost makes for a great story.
Though putting down earnest money for the first time was initially daunting, it turned out to be good practice for our next almost home.
This was in a lovely seaside town called Raymond. The house itself was small, and a bit too close to highway 101 for our liking. But the price was low, and the place had a gorgeous yard, with two centuries-old Redwood trees between the house and the road. Our offer was accepted, and we put down earnest money and arranged for the inspection later in the week.
It was through this experience that we learned another important lesson in home buying: Always attend the inspection in person!
But more on that in the next episode of Realty Reality (Our Long and Winding Road to Pendleton).
Click here for part two: Inspection reveals a dungeon (and not the fun “Dungeons and Dragons” kind)
