I’m a Mortgages Writer: Here’s the Homebuying Advice I Ignored | National

As soon as I saw it, I knew it was a gardener’s house.

Full sun. Full composter. Native perennials. While the raised beds had seen better days, the soil within them was soft and lovingly tended. It was exactly the kind of place my husband and I had been waiting to find.

Judging by the buyers lining up early for the next showing, we weren’t the only ones.

How could we make our offer stand out? I write about homebuying for a living, so I knew exactly what conventional wisdom called for. The question was whether I was about to ignore my own advice.

The rule I broke (and how it worked out)

The seller, we learned, had lived in the house for more than 50 years. A retired high school teacher, he spent decades of summers tending to those gardens.

I knew so-called “buyer love letters” were risky. But the home seller and his late wife had raised their family there, so I imagined it was an emotional transaction for him, too.

I had a package of tongue-in-cheek travel postcards left over from early 2020 quarantine — you know, when some of us joked about hiking in Puerto Backyarda or nightlife in Los Bed. This one said, “Greetings from my garden! Wish you were here.”

I wrote a simple note on the back: “It’s clear your house has been well loved for many years, and it would be an honor to write the next chapter of our story here.”

We submitted it along with our competitive offer and waited. A few days later, the good news arrived: We got the house.

When is it OK to break the rules?

A buyer love letter — or, a personal appeal to a seller about why you want their house — seems innocent, but it’s more of a risk than you might think. If I had disclosed personal details, I could have put the seller at risk of violating fair housing laws if he chose me over another buyer.

By law, sellers can’t accept (or reject) an offer based on legally protected personal characteristics like race, religion, sex, national origin or familial status. For that reason, some seller’s agents don’t let their clients look at buyers’ personal notes at all. We discussed the risks with our buyer’s agent and approached the note as a small courtesy, not a family biography or the backbone of our offer strategy.

The point of the “no love letters” rule is to reduce the risk of discrimination. While I technically broke the rule, I honored the reasoning behind it by carefully wording our note to focus on the gardens, not the people involved. If I had mentioned, say, wanting to grow potatoes to make my family’s pierogi recipe for Christmas dinner, I could have inadvertently disclosed personal details that had no business being part of the sale.

Before you submit a “love letter” with your offer, talk it over with your buyer’s agent first so you understand the fair housing implications and whether it’s common practice in your market.

So how do you know when it makes sense to ignore traditional guidance? First, understand why the rule exists — something your real estate agent can help you think through. Together, you can decide whether a creative compromise is acceptable.

How to know if bending a rule is worth the risk

A homebuying rule may be worth bending when you’re doing it from a position of knowledge, not pressure. In a hot market, it’s easy to mistake urgency for strategy.

Take home inspections, for instance. Waiving a home inspection because you understand and are prepared to take care of the likely repairs is very different from skipping it to stay competitive in a bidding war.

Skipping the inspection can make your offer more enticing, but it exposes you to costly surprises after you move in. The Realtors Confidence Index, a national survey of the National Association of Realtors’ members, showed that 17% of buyers waived the home inspection contingency in May.

For about $400, buyers can hire a home inspector to give a top-to-bottom assessment of a home’s condition. The report flags potential problems and can give buyers leverage to negotiate repairs or credits from the seller.

Kate Wood, lending expert at NerdWallet, has spent years warning home buyers against skipping inspections. But when she bought a nearly 300-year-old foreclosed home in September 2020, she made an exception. The home was being sold “as is,” so its condition wasn’t up for negotiation.

“Any home inspector would be like, ‘This is a crumbling nightmare,’” Wood says.

Wood weighed the pros and cons. Between the property’s obvious condition and her experience researching and writing about fixer-uppers, she felt comfortable buying it without a home inspection. Still, she emphasizes that her decision wasn’t impulsive, and most buyers shouldn’t follow her lead.

“Is this something that you should just do willy-nilly? No — definitely no,” she says.

The homebuying mistakes that can cost you thousands

If you do decide to ignore a piece of homebuying advice, sweat the details — and don’t make it one that stretches your budget to the breaking point.

Some so-called “rules” may be out of date. For example, you don’t have to put 20% down to buy a house. Most first-time buyers make a smaller down payment.

The 28/36 rule is solid, though. It recommends spending no more than 28% of your gross monthly income on housing and 36% on total debt. As a first-time home buyer, I was tempted to push the budget. But after paying for HVAC repairs, window treatments and — yes — new cedar raised garden beds, I’m grateful we didn’t.

The same goes for shopping mortgage lenders. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recommends comparing at least three loan offers from different lenders. Shopping around can save you $600 to $1,200 per year, estimates Freddie Mac, depending on today’s mortgage rates.

As for me: Yes, I broke a rule. Yes, I still got the house. But I also stayed within our budget, compared lenders and made sure the monthly payment fit comfortably into our lives.

I’ll never know whether that carefully worded postcard actually helped us get the keys. But I’m certain that our financial discipline is what’s helped us keep them.

The article I’m a Mortgages Writer: Here’s the Homebuying Advice I Ignored originally appeared on NerdWallet.