After seven months of searching, Tonya Smith was ready to give up on her dream of home ownership and sign a lease for another year on a rental.
The 30-year-old had put offers in on 11 different homes, taking time to write personalized letters for many of them and offering over asking when she could. Each time her realtor texted her to let her know she hadn’t been selected. Eleven rejections was proving to be more than Smith could take.
“I’m a Pisces, so I’m a little sensitive. I would get so attached and think, ‘OK, this is going to be the one, it’s going to happen,’ and then every time it wouldn’t,” Smith says. “It was emotional and frustrating…in this economy, I thought I would never buy a house.”
Smith is far from alone in her frustrations with the housing market over the past year and a half. Many buyers reported feeling discouraged during their search, given low inventory, high demand, and record-breaking prices. Adding to the struggle, more houses are being snapped up by investors or turned into short-term rentals. It’s tough out there, especially for first-time homebuyers. More than a few have shed some tears as they navigate the stressful process.
This spring, Smith decided to put in one final offer on a $215,000 three-bed, two-bath home in a college town in Texas. Her bid was $10,000 under the asking price, so she wasn’t expecting good news: Though demand was starting to fall in April, the market was still hot, and 58.8% of homes sold for more than the asking price.
Then she received a different kind of Easter miracle: a text from her realtor that read, “Call me!” The home was hers if she wanted it.
“I wasn’t able to offer over, and I felt in this market, if you’re not able to offer over you won’t get it,” she says. “I didn’t even know why I was signing [the offer].”
What set Smith’s offer apart, especially when institutional investors were also interested in the property? The fact that she applied on her own. According to Smith, the previous owner was an older single woman who wanted to help another woman out.
“There were a bunch of investors, and she saw that I was a single lady,” says Smith. “She felt that woman-to-woman connection of, ‘I want her to be the one to buy my house.'”
Smith closed on the house in April and moved in in May. In the weeks since, she’s been hard at work upgrading the floors and painting the rooms, and enjoying her new neighborhood.
She bought the house without seeing it in person. While she loves it, it was built in the 1920s and owned by the same family until Smith purchased it (the seller lived there her entire life). That means it has plenty of character—but needs a bit of TLC. So far she’s pulled out the carpet in multiple rooms—revealing beautiful hardwood floors—and repainted rooms. She also refinished the brick fireplace in the living room.
That’s costly, and with recession fears rising, Smith says she’s cutting back on buying coffee and other small luxuries to start to rebuild her savings account, which she depleted on the purchase.
“Even though I had to put a lot of my savings into it, the house feels like a savings account,” she says. “The transformation of it, this was meant to be.”
And she hopes to be able to extend the same kindness to a potential buyer one day. If she ever decides to move, that is.
“I love this home so much,” she says. “I think after how I was able to get it, it’s going to be hard for me to want to sell it someday.”
In This Economy? is a new Fortune series exploring how people are getting ahead today, from buying a home to joining the Great Resignation to cashing out crypto. We want to hear from readers about how they are maneuvering their finances, careers, and lifestyles in 2022. Email reporter Alicia Adamczyk with your story.
