Agent Attempts Career Suicide for First Time Home Buyer

June 16^th 2009 my husband, Rusty and I will be married one whole year.

 Many people have told us how tough marriage can be-No one told me that we would completely lose our minds once we said "I do".  My parents have been married 38 years.  This past Memorial Day my Mom told me that she could not be paid enough to live the first 10 years of her marriage once again.  She said "If you expect to be happy everyday, all the time and agree always that you need to WAKE UP and be real."Overall we are happy and I look forward to spending a life time with my husband. But, like most we have hit a lot of pot holes and detours in our short road together.

Our biggest battle thus far has been buying a home; the money, getting a loan, picking a house - you name it we battled about it.  It has been stressful on so many levels. Imagine being a newlywed and buying a home is our first "BIG" decision "TOGETHER".  Add to that the stress of being the Realtor for my husband while trying to learn how to be a wife and my Husband is a first time home buyer with new wife that is a relatively new real estate agent.  The kicker is both parties our well educated, vocal, opinionated(aka Control Freaks) -Oh by the way, money is generally a touchy subject for us.

Words like "needs a little work", "it's a good buy", "and the drive is not bad" are so subjective. My concept and his concept are so completely different. I took my husband to a home I thought he would love to only get as far as the driveway before he said "why would show me that?"  At that point, I started previewing homes in advance.  I actually prepared and submitted offers on numerous homes to retract 2 or 3 days later.  Listening to and learning from my husband was the key. He was waiting for me to have a "WOW Love It" reaction and would get discouraged if I was less than enthusiastic.

Fights?-Yes Fights!  About things we never thought we would ever disagree about, much less have in the first year of marriage.  

Then it all hit me when, my Broker in Charge banned me from putting in another offer unless we were both ready and willing to go the distance.  I was so wrapped up in emotions as a buyer and a wife that I was unaware I was attempting career suicide.  My Broker in Charge said "you need to multi-task and separate being the agent from being the wife".  She said to me "look at it from the outside" -"as an agent, would you keep yourself as clients"? "Would you tolerate buyers submitting and withdrawn offers only to withdrawn and continue?"  My answer was an immediate NO! I wouldn't stand for the crazy, erratic behavior from buyers that fight every step of the way.  I would have cut loose clients like that months ago. What I learned is that, my husband and I needed to separate my job from our emotions and home buying plans as couple.

I started using with phrases like "As your agent this is my thought.... "Or he would ask "As my Wife what do you think...". Once we realized we needed to differentiate things calmed down.    Finally, we came up with an idea to individually score the houses. We ranked them individual desires.  We didn't talk about our individual scores until the end of the day.  If both of us did not score the house high - It was OUT, no questions.   When we sat down, looking at the scores and talking about what was really important to us picking a house was simple.

I have learned so much about my husband, my marriage, myself and how to be a more effective agent.  I am delighted to end Part 1 of my Newlywed Blog by saying we have went under contract (Yippee!) on our 1^st home together.  

 I will update everyone on the soon in Part 2 on the contract to closing process.

 

Until then enjoy your marriage

The End