Our Story: Rose & Greg- Buying a Home in North Tacoma
In 2020, I made the move from Bellingham, Washington, into a rental house with my partner in Tacoma’s North End neighborhood. A few months after we moved in my partner and I heard that our neighbor was going to be selling his house- a cute 2 bedroom, 1 bath rambler with garage and alley access, that hadn’t been updated since the ‘60s. At the time we were renting a house but I knew that I wanted to be paying my own mortgage, not someone else’s. We reached out to Laura Anderson who recommended we start the process of applying for a loan, and that we begin touring through other properties so we could get an idea of what was happening in the Pierce County real estate market.
Although we were very interested in buying our neighbor’s property he was delaying selling it, and we had gotten quite excited about the possibility of buying our own house in Tacoma. We started touring through other homes. Looking back, I am grateful that he did delay, because before doing this we didn’t quite know what was going on in the market. We toured through houses all around Pierce County including properties for sale in Lakewood, University Place, Fircrest, North Tacoma and South Tacoma! In doing so we were able to solidify the neighborhoods that we were interested in buying a home in, as well as what price range and amount of fixes that we were willing to do. It was nice to have an agent that knew what was happening in the Pierce County real estate market, Laura was able to share with us what properties were actually selling for versus what they were listed at. She also knew a lot about building and remodeling houses, which was extremely helpful when it came to the possibility of purchasing a fixer-upper.
After looking at a lot of other houses, we knew that we really wanted to purchase our neighbors. After some negotiations handled by our real estate agents we came to a price that we agreed upon and were under contract. Laura explained every step of the process to us including the difference between an inspection versus an appraisal, what things could be called out by the appraiser, what title and escrow did, etc. Thankfully, we negotiated and got a new electrical panel put in and paid for by the seller before closing!
One thing that I hadn’t quite anticipated was just how much paperwork I would need to submit to my local lender because I’m self employed. It all worked out and we got the keys less than a month later. Because the property was next door, we decided to continue renting and do a full remodel on the house before moving in. We said goodbye to the orange retro carpet, and the pink and green walls, adios to the lime green kitchen and got to work making it our own. We moved in and haven’t looked back since! We are so excited to continue to grow our real estate portfolio and are already looking to purchase our second property in Tacoma. We highly recommend working with a local real estate agent who knows the market and is good at negotiating! We really loved that Laura is born and raised in Tacoma and had relationships with not only other agents and lenders, but with contractors also. We are so excited to continue working with her!
Written by Rose Ager.