AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Okay, okay,” she said. “And your income? Before taxes?”
I told her, and she was impressed.
“The tech world was booming when I got the job,” I said. “They had to incentivize me to join them and not another start-up around the corner.”
Sloane took her phone back and entered a few numbers on it. “Okay, you’re looking at something like a $200K down payment for the house,” she said. “Could you swing that?”
It wasn’t just the salary that my company used to incentivize me. The bonuses and long-term incentives were particularly generous, and so I had a good amount of money saved, though it was currently sitting in mutual funds.
“I can get it, yeah,” I said.
“Okay,” my sister said. “I think we should drive around and look at it in person, along with a few other properties, but I strongly recommend we make an offer tonight that includes a check for earnest money.”
“Earnest money?”
My sister waved it away. “One percent of the value of the house to show that you’re interested. It ends up going towards the house, and you get it back if things don’t work out. Basically, it’s a way to reserve the house and make it so other people can’t come in and buy it out from under you.”
“I should talk to Leo about this,” I said.
“Eh…” Sloane trailed off. “Yes, you should. But I don’t think he should be involved in this if you can do it on your own. Or even if you can’t. I think it’s important you put yourself and that baby first.”
It felt a little like I’d be pushing him away. After all, he’d be living in the house, too. He said he trusted me. Would this be breaking his trust? He might want some guarantee that our foundation was solid, especially because he was committing to being a father.
It was a Catch-22 of sorts. The safest thing for me to do would be to buy the house on my own, but it might also put my relationship with Leo on rocky ground. Buying the house together would be a leap forward in terms of trust, but it would set us both up for disaster if things turned south. The baby wasn’t here yet, and words are just words.
Sloane was being quite harsh, but I expected that from a concerned sister and mother. The logical part of my brain knew she was right, even if the romantic part was fighting it every step of the way. This is the way it always went with me: the two sides of the brain fighting and the logical side almost always winning. Ultimately, though, the logical side never truly steered me wrong. The mistakes I’d made were only when I ignored that part of me and did what my heart wanted instead. It made me wonder if I was making the same type of mistake now.
But… but… but… my mind countered. This time feels different.
I was sure that I’d gone through the same cycle all those other times before. It was only in retrospect that I could see the forest for the trees and realize how stupid I’d been. With the cloud of novelty lifted in a few months' time, perhaps I’d see the light and realize how risky my decisions were being right now.
And I was thinking for two right now. I had to make safer choices.
If Leo was the one, then he’d understand.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it. Let’s put down the earnest money and make the offer.”
Sloane’s eyes lit up, and a smile grew across her face.
“Attagirl, sis,” she said.
“What’s the next step?”
“We check out the house, and I give you a physical tour,” Sloane said, “just to make sure it’s what you want. It will be, I promise, but this is a massive amount of money to be spending on a place, so you want to make sure that it feels right.”
“Of course.”
“And if it doesn’t, we just take that earnest money back, and I find someone else to make the offer to for the steal of the century.”
She was pushing the house hard. It was naturally a little nerve-wracking to take all this money that I’d spent a lifetime to accumulate and put it into something physical. Especially something that was at risk of being destroyed by the elements, of which there were many in Southern California. My money was safe and protected in mutual fund investments. The second it went into a house, it was potentially at risk of vanishing if The Big One finally hit.
But that’s what insurance was for.
“So let’s say I do like the house,” I said. “What then?”
“Well, there won’t be other offers, so hopefully the seller just accepts yours and we can go forward with the typical pre-sale process. Then the home inspection and the finalization of the details. Hopefully nothing majorly unexpected shows up, but if it does, it’s fine, we can usually find ways to work around it. There might be some last minute haggling over the price, but probably not anything too significant.
“I can escalate this and, when all is said and done, you’ll be a proud new homeowner in no time.”
