In 1989, my family and I immigrated to the U.S. and didn’t turn back. We lived in the city of Angels briefly, six years to be exact and then made our way to the city of grunge, now the city of techies. Ah…yes, the tech industry.
Washington state used to be the mecca of the logging industry, hence the nickname the Evergreen State. But as the dangers of the logging industry became evident, the mining industry was on life support, the city of Seattle which is poppin’, was almost on its’ last breath too. There’s a story that said something along the lines of, “Will the last person to leave Seattle turn out the lights?” Yup, our extremely coveted financially stable city, that still hasn’t won a baseball championship, almost wasn’t.
But then the state of Washington got savvy and broke the deal that saved the city by offering Microsoft tax breaks impossible to turn down to relocate from New Mexico to Washington state. And that’s where it all began, 1979.
Fast forward to 2017 and we are living in the city with the fastest changing skyline, most expensive housing market for both renters and first-time home buyers. How do I know? Well let’s just say that we are part of the locals who have gradually moved further and further out of the city.
In August 2009, during the recession, my husband and I got our first apartment in Capitol Hill, the north quiet side of Capitol Hill. It was a small one bedroom apartment in a 1920s building. After comfortably living there for about two years, the building was taken over by a new management company and the rent rose $50. Not a big deal initially, but then they raised the rent about $20 here and there for the next six months. They were utility fees, remodel fees, oxygen fees. So we moved to Beacon Hill. Got a 700 square feet apartment with a beautiful view of the I-90. And we were comfortable from July 2012-2014. That was the first hike. $100. No big deal, right? Well then our landlord decides to paint the triplex we lived in. The following year that paint job was going to cost us an extra $200 a month. Just like that. I was in disbelief. How could the rent jump that much and it be legal? Well it was. Per the SMC 7.24.030, we had been served enough notice. No rent control.
So we moved south. Found friendly staff at the Station at Othello. We found an apartment in November, during the non-peak time for rentals and house shopping. But we quickly realized that this place wouldn’t be convenient long-term. Pretty soon we were paying $1501 for rent and realized that a mortgage wasn’t too far away. My husband and I knew it was time to get a house.
We had started saving for a house in 2013. By the time summer of 2016 rolled by, we had almost $10,000 saved up. Before we started saving, we did try a couple of times to work with a couple of realtors/loan agents, but we had a wrinkle in our ability to shop. I needed to transfer my work history from the social security number I worked under. That was something that made us not be an ideal customer for some. But the way I saw it, it just wasn’t time yet. We tried two different loan people in the summer and autumn of 2016 and it didn’t work out.
Then, the skies opened up and Yesenia Celestino became a loan agent. She was a classmate of mine at the University of Washington. She made lemonade and opened a tax office in Tri-Cities. Finally, when her opportunity came, she was ready to help out the DREAMER and former DREAMER population. She of course is also open to helping out the general population. But she really touched our hearts and our lives by being so down to earth and not judgmental of our past. Even though she couldn’t help us get a loan in October of 2016, she gave us homework so we could be ready to buy in February/March. By February, a week before my 32nd birthday, we were pre-approved. Yesenia was amazing.
We began shopping. We had already made contact with Tony Rossman in December of 2015. He gave us some tips to be ready to buy. And despite this being a sellers’ market took a chance on us knowing that our budget was limited and with my husband starting to coach softball, scheduling visits of the homes would be challenging.
I was getting inpatient. Every house that my husband and I could envision our life together in would get snatched up by buyers who could make it rain dollar bills, had no contingencies or would skip inspections were beating us every single time. After four offers that were no-gos and getting intimidated at multiple open houses, I decided we needed a new strategy. A risky one, but a new one. We didn’t have dollars to make it rain and there was no way we would buy a house that needed major repairs or would need repairs in the near future. We needed a move-in ready home that was within our budget where we could still afford to feed ourselves. Yes, there are some who over commit and realize that they can not afford groceries after their big purchase.
I decided to wait on a house that sat on the market for a weekend. Tony had told us that houses that stayed on the market for at least a week, would have sellers who would be more willing to negotiate and help us split closing costs. You see, as I mentioned we had about $10,000 saved up, but were only counting down payment. When Yesenia met with us she told us about closing costs. We were a little taken back by the news that we would need almost $20,000 upfront just to get into a house. FHA loans on average require that you put 3-3.5% down, basically wiping out our savings. Yesenia found a program that would work best for us that wouldn’t wipe out our savings and Tony demonstrated significant confidence in helping us get either all closing costs included or split. And on the fifth round, with my husband’s amazing patience, Yesenia’s detailed advice and attention to detail, Tony’s negotiating skills (we got half our closing costs split and major repairs) and my persistence, we found a winner.
I wrote a letter to the couple detailing how I checked on the house on Redfin every day until the weekend past. Explained how my heart would race every time I checked and found that the house wasn’t pending yet. On a Tuesday morning, when I was ready to throw in the towel, Tony emailed us with the news he thought that he found our house. It was everything we wanted (except for the .75 bathroom not being in the master bedroom): 3 bedrooms, 1.75 bathrooms, huge kitchen, garage, fenced in back yard, a place to build and raise a family. Our piece of the pie; 1480 square feet of shelter on a 8000 square foot lot.
We are closing in less than two weeks. It is terrifying and exciting at the same time. We don’t have furniture for the home, but with time, we will build our little Magallanes kingdom. We have to also sublease our apartment—find renters!
There is one thing that we’ve learned through this process and that is that God always surpasses your expectations. There we were thinking that we would have to settle for a 1000 square foot home, 2 or 3 bedrooms and one bathroom and some yard, but instead were blessed with a home where we can not just start a family, but raise one too.
In the land of the high salaries and cash offers we got our piece of the pie. It wasn’t easy, but anything worth while usually isn’t.
GameOfGiveAndTake 