Well, I did it. I bought my first home. I closed a little over a month ago.
None of this would've been possible without the help from Lisa Smith Harrell of Juice Homes.
I was nervous, actually talking to a realtor about my future goals and what I was specifically looking for. Lisa put me at ease, almost immediately after meeting her. We discussed my needs/wants in a home, location requirements, and the typical home buying process (of which I was mostly clueless, except for my HGTV obsession....she gave me paperwork to look over, as she explained thoroughly). She entered my wants/needs into a search engine and I received emails as new listings popped up that fit my criteria. She suggested that I get preapproved for my loan, so if something came up where there could be a lot of competition, I'd have a slight edge. Fortunately, that didn't come into play, but it did take a few months for the perfect place to pop up.
Lisa didn't pressure me at all to pick something, she didn't harass me when I got stressed out about other stuff and stopped actively looking. I guess she just knew that I'd come around when the time was right and when the right home showed up in the listings. Once that happened, she helped to make the process of home buying as painless as possible. I'm a bit of a night owl and sometimes a worrier, but Lisa always responded to my emails and texts with haste, often times reassuring me that these things take time, but we'd be perfectly fine to make the closing date (even when I went to Vegas for my birthday, getting back to Austin the day before I closed)
In the end, everything went seamlessly... now to get to unpacking. read more