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House hunting with your partner: sounds exciting, right? It’s a new chapter in your lives. You’re finally going to be homeowners. Gone will be the days of sharing walls with loud neighbors and having to take your dog for long walks each time he has to do his business. You’ll have your own property with a yard: no shared walls. No sense of intrusion. And you’ll have one of the most valuable assets possible: a home. Buying a house with your partner is also a way of taking your commitment to each other deeper. Forget getting married: buying property together is the real union. The paperwork surrounding that, should you ever split up, is far more complicated than divorce papers. But looking for a house can take a lot out of you, and challenge your relationship in ways you hadn’t expected. Here’s what you should prepare for.
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The scheduling alone will test you
If you find a property you want to see, when you see it isn’t entirely up to your convenience. The open house is on such and such day, during limited hours. Or the realtor can only meet you there during a very small window. So you’re both scrambling to see a house during your lunch break, and you’ll get in fights when one person runs late, or arrives looking so disheveled that who would sell a house to that person. Just making these open houses and showings work within your busy schedules will cause many micro fights.
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You’ll feel you’re making all the visits
There will be a lot of times when only one of you can go in person to see a house, and just has to take photos for the other to review. You’ll start to keep score of how many times you’ve represented yourself and your partner at a viewing. He’s keeping the same score for himself. Either way, you’re both starting to feel that you—respectively—do all of the work here.
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It consumes your free time, so less dates
Your weekends are naturally spent viewing homes. It’s the best time to see multiple open houses in a short period of time. But that means you aren’t going on a hike, making a nice brunch at home, and doing all of the fun things you’d typically do on a weekend. You know—the things that make you feel close. Your eyeballs are hurting from all the house hunting, you don’t even want to do anything else.
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Correspondence with the realtor
Then there is the correspondence with the realtor. She has both of your phone numbers, and somebody needs to take her calls, confirm viewing appointments, and talk to her about offers. You both feel too busy to do this, and argue over who will take her call this time.
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When you feel strongly, but differently
This is a tough one but it will come up: one of you will absolutely love a house, and be ready to put in a high offer—whatever it takes—right now, but the other one doesn’t love it. You can’t move into a place that one person feels lukewarm about. But this blow is devastating to the person who loved the home. And you’ll feel that blow for days (or weeks) in your relationship.
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You’ll be in super savings mode
You’ll be so aware of your spending habits because you’ve already started to stress out about paying a mortgage you don’t even have yet. So you’ll bicker over how much money one person spent on a haircut or on drinks out with friends.
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The appreciation vs quality of life issue
You’ll likely need to decide between buying a place you love now (including the neighborhood) or buying a lower-priced place in an up and coming neighborhood, that hasn’t come up yet. It’s very rare you get both. You may feel quite differently about this, with one person feeling very strongly about buying a shabby place that will increase in value over the years, and the other refusing to live in a neighborhood she less than loves. It’s one thing men and women usually don’t see eye to on eye when buying a house.
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It’s all you’ll talk about
House hunting is all you will talk about until you find the place. It’s all you’ll talk about when brushing your teeth in the morning and when making dinner at night. It’s all you’ll talk about to other people at dinner parties. You’ll start to feel like mindless, house-obsessed zombies who are losing their identities.
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Outsider input is a factor
Let’s not forget that you and your partner aren’t the only ones in this conversation. You should be, but you aren’t. Your parents or his parents have a lot to say. Perhaps his parents want you two to buy near them, and that’s the last thing you’d want. Perhaps your parents are very opinionated on what you should pay for a house, and they put that pressure on your partner. Meanwhile, you’re both arguing about allowing outsiders into this discussion.
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You’ll start to resent your current home
While you didn’t have that much of an issue with your rental place before, you’re starting to resent it. At first, the idea of buying a house was just exciting, but now, the more your put into it, the more it feels like your current accommodations are a prison.
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It triggers far-future discussions
Buying a home inevitably triggers conversations about the future that you weren’t ready to have. Hopefully you’d already discussed whether or not you want kids, but had you discussed how far apart you want each to be? Or how many you’ll have? What about retirement? Will you retire in this home? Do you want to? Based on the length of the loan, you may have no choice.
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One feels she’s doing all the research
It’s common for each person to feel that they and they alone are doing all of the research on this, spending hours each night looking at properties online and contacting realtors and sellers. You can begin to feel it’s you against your partner, and not you with your partner.
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Then there are the loan talks
How long of a loan do you want? Do you want a long one with high interests or a short term one with lower interests? How much do you want to take out on a loan, and how much are you willing to put in from your savings? These are not easy conversations.
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When it comes time to make an offer
You’ll argue extensively when it comes time to make an offer. You may not agree on which figure to present. Or, you may even argue over how you present the offer, and who says what during negotiations. The whole drive home, you may fight over the precise wording one person used, and how it may have ruined your chances.
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And if you lose a place…
If you lose a place you really wanted, you may fight over whose fault that is. Is it because of this one thing your partner said that was off-putting to the sellers? Is it because the offer was too low? You’ll obsess over what you did wrong for weeks.
