Ceyla Ponders
Nov 2 · 2 min read

Go for it if you can!

I bought my first house when I was 23. I had just finished paying off my student loans. (I only owed $15k to begin with and had a well-paying job.)

I had almost no saved money. My thought was that I could either buy a nice car, or I could buy a cheap car AND a house. I opted for the latter.

The first person I called about buying a house listened to how little money I had, and then essentially hung up on me.

But I persisted.

Eventually I found a fixer-upper. It needed a new roof. The only livable space was the kitchen and a small bathroom (no bathtub or shower). I found out that the government had a special mortgage loan program that let me finance the remodels as a part of the mortgage. I don’t remember if it was for first-time homebuyers only. But that loan did require a lot of extra work upfront, including hiring a contractor before I even bought the house, so I could prove to the bank that the remodels were financially feasible.

For the first 6 months that I lived in that house, contractors were all around me. I had to sneak past them to take showers in a moldy upstairs bathroom in the mornings. An inspector kept showing up. His job was to reassure the bank that at the end of the day, the house would be worth more than I owed on the loan. Very tedious, stressful process.

But it was soooo worth it.

Initially the money was tight. I was fortunate to have my parents as a financial safety net, but I was determined not to use them.

Because payments on a fixed-rate mortgage stay the same over time, my payments became easier as the months went on. My income increased year after year. The mortgage payments did not.

Unlike paying rent, I was building equity. I ended up selling the house for a nice profit after I got married.

I’m really glad that I bought that house.

I really should write a proper Medium story on this topic.

Ceyla Ponders

Written by

Anonymous writer, software engineer, gardener, and wife.