Buying Our First Home: Price & Mortgage Details

If you are nosy about real estate like me, then settle in because I’m sharing the details of buying our first home.

In this video I discuss all the details of our mortgage. All the details of our experience with getting a mortgage and closing on our first home so you can learn what to expect as a first time home buyer.

It’s fun getting nosy in someone else’s money, isn’t it?

In the video I share:

• how much our house cost
• the amount we paid for PMI
• the fees we paid for closing
• all the actual paperwork

Buying Our First Home

We bought our first home two months before our wedding. We knew we wanted to start off together in a home and found a house we loved the first day we looked at houses.

Since the market was already hot in our area, houses were flying off the market. Several we looked at in the morning had offers by the afternoon.

We also put an offer on a house that first day! After some back and forth with the seller we settled on a purchase price. We were both thrilled and terrified that we didn’t look at that many houses. It was one of the first five houses we saw and we knew as soon as we looked that we could live there happily.

What We Did Wrong Buying Our House

We did make a few “mistakes” when buying our first home.

Our Down Payment Was Low

Most financial experts recommend putting 20% down on a home but we definitely did not do that.

At the time we were paying for a wedding and had other expenses. Because of that went with a FHA loan and a 3.5% down payment.

I felt we could have saved up more for the house, but ultimately we did not want to wait a year or more to get the larger down payment.

We Didn’t Stand Up For Ourselves

Speaking of down payments, I actually wanted to put 5% down but our mortgage lender messed up the paperwork and only did 3.5%.

I was too nervous by the time we got our final documents to try correcting it. I was worried something would cause the whole deal to not work out.

In retrospect that was incredibly silly. I should have stood my ground over her mistake, but after experiencing a failed house purchase previously I was too nervous.

We Had A Bad Lender

Obviously I did not like our mortgage lender after she messed up our down payment.

We should have shopped around more and found more options for lending. While we got a good rate, I did not have a positive experience and it is possible another lender would have been better.

We also made several other mistakes with our home buying process that I detail in the video below.

I’m happy to be sharing my experience buying a house for the first time to help others, both good and bad! There are mistakes we made during the home buying process as first time home buyers.

What We Did Right Buying Our House

There were a lot of things we did right buying our first home.

We Loved Our Realtor

We worked with a realtor we trusted.

This makes a huge difference when you are a first time home buyer. When you know your realtor won’t push you in the wrong direction just to make a sale then you can relax and enjoy the home buying process even if you don’t understand everything that is happening.

Our Interest Rate Was Low

Our interest rate is also quite good! 3.65% interest on a mortgage loan is a great rate even if it wasn’t the absolute bottom rate.

Two years later rates have gone up multiple percent points and it’s not worth it for us to refinance even to get rid of our PMI.

Our Neighborhood Is Awesome

We bought in a great neighborhood.

At the time we bought houses were under $100 per sq ft and now you can’t hardly find that in one that hasn’t been remodeled.

Houses are going for much higher amounts now. In 6 years we’ve gained $100,000 in equity since buying.

We are in one of the countries hottest neighborhoods and that is great news for us as homeowners.

The House Fit Our Needs

Our house is the perfect starter home for us.

It’s in a great neighborhood, we have plenty of space to grow into, but not too much space that it is overwhelming.

We have a huge backyard which is great for our dogs. We have an active neighborhood association and our street has fantastic neighbors.

The house is the perfect fit for us for our first home.

Paying Off Our Mortgage Early

Overall we are thrilled with the house that we chose and love where we live. We are also working to pay off our home early!

We use 2 easy strategies to speed up our mortgage payoff every month. You can see how we are doing this in the video above where I also share our exact mortgage statement.

You can see where the payment is going and how it is allocated each month and see our mortgage statement breakdown here.