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“But we’re good tenants,” I say. “And I’m pregnant! I understand he wants to make money, but he can have some decency.”
“I know.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Well, I have an idea,” Scott says. “I’m going to go talk to the bank and see if we can get a mortgage. We’ll buy our own place and not have to worry about landlords and rent and all that.”
A house. We refuse to have credit cards but now we're talking about a mortgage. “I thought we were done with credit.”
“This is different. We’re done with credit cards. I’m talking about buying a house. A place of our own to raise our child. I’m willing to owe money for that.”
I shake my head. “There’s no way we’ll get a mortgage. We have terrible credit from all that debt we racked up, and then we were late on payments all those months before we finally got it under control. Plus neither of us have the greatest job. We don’t even have a down payment or anything.”
“Let’s just go see,” Scott says. “What do we have to lose? The worst they can do is turn us down.”
So Scott makes an appointment with someone who’s recommended to us as being good with first time homebuyers, and we go in with our pay stubs and social security cards. The loan officer beams, so happy to meet us. She must see a hundred people a week, yet she treats us like we’re her only clients. Come to think of it, she treats us better than my doctor does. She’s just so incredibly excited for us, she says, and wants to do everything in her power to make it all work out.
She looks at our material and asks where I’m from. My social security card says, “Eligible for employment only with INS authorization” on it, giving away the fact that I’m an immigrant.
“I moved here from Canada,” I tell her. “Does that matter for getting a mortgage?”
“No! No, I was just curious. Okay, let’s get started then.” She swivels her chair to face her computer screen and starts typing, posing questions every few seconds and typing in our responses: “Melanie, employer? Number of years there? Scott, employer? Number of years there?”
After twenty minutes, her smile widens and she announces that we are indeed eligible for a home mortgage. They’ll even lend us the down-payment and closing costs, so we don’t have to come up with a single cent up front. Unbelievable. She prints a pre-approval letter, gives us the number of a great real estate agent, and that’s that. We’re free to make an offer on a house.
We drive home in silence, walk upstairs, sit down at our kitchen table, and stare at each other, wide eyed.
“Wow,” I say at last. “So now what?”
“Let’s call the real estate agent and start looking for houses.”
Scott calls the number on the card the loan officer gave us, and the next day we’re driving around with her, looking at houses she has picked out in our price range. Apparently she couldn’t find any that meets all of our criteria (three bedrooms, nice yard, good neighborhood), but if we’re willing to make a few compromises, we’ll find a house that’s perfect for us.
She brings us to a place in a nice neighborhood with a big yard, but the house only has two tiny bedrooms. Another place is really run down and doesn’t have a yard. The third place is a three-bedroom that needs painting but is otherwise in good condition. It doesn’t have a yard at all, but it has a beautiful old maple tree in the front yard. The neighborhood isn’t the greatest, but it’s getting cleaned up.
“See?” the agent says, driving past a huge empty lot just a couple blocks from the house. “They’re building luxury condos here. This will be a very desirable neighborhood when these are finished.”
A big billboard displays the plans. It does look nice, the picture for a complex with a waterfall fountain in the front entrance.
“What was there before?” I wonder.
“I think it was a little grocery store,” the agent says. “A mom and pop place that went out of business. The developer bought it, along with the rest of the block. They’re getting ready to start construction. The whole neighborhood will benefit from this improvement. Property values will go up. You’re actually getting in at a good time, and it’s a great price for that house, with that gorgeous tree. It’s a good investment for a young family.”
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