Maggie:
[0:03] I’m Maggie.

Taylor:
[0:04] Taylor.

Jewels:
[0:05] I’m Jewels.

Loren:
[0:25] I’m Loren again. Loren with an O.

Becca:
[0:31] So that officially leads us into the whole reason for recording this.

Taylor:
[0:32] The actual episode.

Becca:
[0:42] Real estate investing, buying your first house. Everything about the deep anxieties that come with real estate and what it could possibly mean for your past, present and future. So I’m very excited that we’re talking about this. It’s all I’ve been thinking about for a really long time. So I think to get started, we’re just going to talk about a personal experience with real estate and where we are with it right now.

Taylor:
[0:55] Specifically with buying houses, right.

Becca:
[1:07] Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, yeah, so buying houses or not buying houses, renting whatever. Um, Julie do you want to set it? Do you want to start us on your personal experience with real estate?

Jewels:
[1:22] Sure, I guess since we bought our house first, yep.

Becca:
[1:23] I guess since we bought our house first, I I think chronologically it makes the most sense.

Taylor:
[1:27] There you go. Yeah, chronic, let’s go in the order chronologically.

Becca:
[1:30] She actually came up with this whole idea.

Jewels:
[1:34] Okay, so Zach and I bought our house at the end of 2014, which I’ve mentioned on a previous episode. It was more of a shack at the time, but I fell in love with it.

Loren:
[1:47] I’m curious, can you say what aspects of it appealed to you because I saw those before pictures.

Jewels:
[1:48] Uh, definitely the location.

Maggie:
[1:57] You should post a couple.

Taylor:
[1:58] My God, you should. I was like shocked when I saw your before pictures that you would take the risk. I would have been like, nope.

Loren:
[2:08] Yeah, because, well, we can get to me, but, I’m so bad at seeing the potential in a house, so the fact that you saw it, I’m amazed.

Becca:
[2:16] And I’m, you’re probably going to get into this. But like what did it cost? And what year did you buy it in? Looking back do you think that was the right price for it? Anyway you cut, you can cut all that, but I really want to know.

Jewels:
[2:27] Oh those, those are tough questions. Okay. Okay. So definitely loved the location, loved the big trees in the backyard and in spite of the condition of the house, it just had a good feeling, which I think matters, you know like it had enough light, all that kind of stuff, and being on the street and the street’s not fancy. Like my neighbor’s houses are not fancy but it just felt very, very much like a community. It was a good feeling place. So we bought it at the end of 2014 with a construction loan because no bank would give us a mortgage on it. Um and then we…

Taylor:
[3:03] That’s pretty impressive too, that you did that.

Loren:
[3:04] Can you, I’m so… explain what that means?

Becca:
[3:07] Yeah, what does that mean? And what is the interest rate on a non mortgage loan?

Jewels:
[3:11] Okay. This is really tapping into my memory. I don’t remember what the interest rate is, but I think during the construction loan you made, you perhaps you only pay the interest like you don’t pay anything towards the principal, you’re holding cost for that loan is just paying the interest while it’s happening.

Taylor:
[3:21] Interesting. That is so fascinating. I don’t even know that you could do that. I think a lot of people don’t realize that you can just take out a construction loan.

Jewels:
[3:37] It’s not super easy. You have to find like a mortgage broker in a bank who’s willing to do it for you because it’s a commercial loan. So usually this is the type of loan that builders, homebuilders get.

Loren:
[3:48] So are you still paying that or?

Jewels:
[3:48] No, no, no. So once construction was wrapped up then you re-fi into a conventional mortgage because they will finally give you a mortgage.

Taylor:
[3:57] Yeah. How did you even know how to do that? I would have had no idea that I could do that.

Becca:
[3:57] How did you know to do this at the age of 24? They were 24, tiny babies.

Jewels:
[4:05] So definitely our badass realtor, Chris who most of you know.

Taylor:
[4:10] Oh, Chris was your realtor? That’s how you met him?

Becca:
[4:10] I didn’t know.

Jewels:
[4:11] Yes, that is not how we met Chris.

Taylor:
[4:17] Oh, did you meet Chris at like a bar drunkenly? Because that’s how I imagined you meeting. Crossfit? Oh, you know, I think, I did know that actually and forgot. Yeah, Crossfit, fucking Crossfit.

Jewels:
[4:20] Yeah, back in 2012 because our Crossfit class was a fixed, like same people, same time of day and our Crossfit class was 7:45 in the morning. So you only have weird self-employed people because no one who works a normal job can attend that and no one who has to drop kids off at school can attend that.

Taylor:
[4:39] Yeah, you’re all like minded. Weird. Yeah.

Jewels:
[4:44] So it’s all weird entrepreneurs and so that’s how we met Chris and Alison, so then when we decided we wanted to buy a house, we had Chris introduce us to all of that and we were just open, we told them we were basically open to anything, we would happily buy a single family house. We were looking at a lot of duplexes, we were looking in all sorts of parts of town and then um we were happy to originally, we thought maybe we’d get a house that we would do some work on because we like to do that kind of stuff. This was not one that the bank would let us do our own work on, like it’s literally part of the construction loan was that you have to have a, like a contractor do it.

Becca:
[5:25] So just backtracking a little bit, why would, why would a bank not give you a mortgage for this house?

Jewels:
[5:29] Because they basically wouldn’t count any value in the house. So you’d be basically getting a mortgage for the lot, which requires 20% down or maybe more, maybe like 50%.

Loren:
[5:51] They were saying that the lot was more valuable than the actual house.

Maggie:
[6:01] I’m curious to know at what point did you realize there was value in purchasing a house versus continuing to rent? Was it through discussions with Chris from knowing him? Or was it like, you had been renting so long and you were very nomadic at that time of your life that you were like, it made logical sense?

Jewels:
[6:19] So our big wake up call was actually uh I think it’s a wake up call, a lot of people are having now, and that is that we had rented a house here in Austin for three years from about 2010 to 2013 and a month before, like when we were expecting our lease renewal, instead of a lease renewal, we got notice that the owners were going to sell it and here’s a price they would sell it to us for if we wanted to and it wasn’t the long term house we wanted, but it was like okay, like we weren’t planning to move, we were just going to rent that house for another few years at least, had no thoughts about anything at that point and it was like you have 30 days notice to move. And it was realizing just how little agency you have in a rental situation, There are so many perks to renting and you lose so much control and then it was just watching like the home values go up even back then. So we left the country for the better part of the next year and then we came back, we had that feeling where we came back to Austin went, okay, this is a, this place feels good, I want to have a toehold here we better get our shit in order and buy a house. So that’s what sort of prompted that decision.

Maggie:
[7:34] I just always feel like sometimes you and Zach see things before other people do.

Becca:
[7:39] Way before other people do.

Loren:
[7:41] Absolutely, I feel like we had very similar feelings, but six, yeah, six or seven years later, yeah.

Jewels:
[7:46] Yeah, I think bad stuff just happens to us sooner.

Taylor:
[7:52] Can you channel all that energy into which stocks I should buy?

Jewels:
[7:53] I’m in crypto, so if you want to follow…

Becca:
[7:57] Okay. So you come back, you’re already friends with Chris and Alison and then ya’ll decide you want to buy. Um, and then you find this house, you have a really good feeling about it even though it’s a tear down. Um and Chris convinces you or you convince him or ya’ll both decide this is a good decision. And he’s like, okay, a bank won’t let this happen unless you do a construction loan.

Taylor:
[8:27] Chris helped you with that, like navigating that?

Jewels:
[8:30] Yes and Arien. Arien is our mortgage broker and she is an absolute badass, and does really exceptional things, especially dealing with people like Zach and I because being largely self-employed um makes getting mortgages really hard, your paperwork’s a lot more complicated than your typical W-2 employee. So Arien and Chris together really made that happen. The bank that Arien was working for at the time did not want to give us a loan. They were based out of, it was like Oklahoma City or something, is like where the headquarters was and they were like I’m sorry you want a construction loan for a lot in East Austin for, I think our price is like $255,000 and you can buy like a small mansion where the headquarters of the bank is for that in that year. And so the head of the bank, like a few of the heads of the bank literally flew to Austin and Chris and Arien had to drive them around and try to justify to them why they should give us our a loan.

Loren:
[9:40] Wow.

Becca:
[9:41] Holy shit. That is bananas, especially, this is 2014.

Taylor:
[9:42] That is insane.

Jewels:
[9:44] It was insane.

Loren:
[9:47] Is this kind of stuff going on behind the scenes all the time, like people driving around their friends and…

Jewels:
[9:50] No, I don’t think this happens often, I don’t think the heads of banks are flying around but, this is pretty early in like the Austin market being as crazy as it is, they wanted to be writing loans here and this is what Arien brought them and they were like, you’re out of your mind.

Taylor:
[10:12] Wow, that is… how did, how did he convince them?

Jewels:
[10:13] I don’t know, I hope they didn’t take them in the house because I think that would have blown the whole deal. Like just look at it from the outside. Don’t mind the bars on the windows, it’s cool.

Becca:
[10:26] I wonder is this a symptom of like post 2008 housing crash where they’re like, we can’t just give this sweet, beautiful quote, unquote self employed couple, like a loan for a tear down garbage home and expect them to pay it back.

Jewels:
[10:43] I would love to think that they care in that way and I don’t think that’s why. But I think it was just the math, math on the paper looks real bad.

Becca:
[10:43] Yeah. So they convinced them that, okay, you’re right. This isn’t a mortgage. This is a construction loan situation. Is this something that listeners should consider if they are living in a high cost of living city and can’t afford a move in ready home?

Jewels:
[11:12] Right now, I would say something you have to do construction on is probably cost you more because we have an insane labor shortage. And lumber costs and other material costs are also exceptionally high right now because of the supply chain issues the last year. So no, I think.

Loren:
[11:30] You’re justifying the decision we made.

Becca:
[11:35] So everyone forget what you heard knowing the market conditions and how that impacts real estate.

Jewels:
[11:37] Well, I think, I think it’s just knowing the market conditions and how that impacts real estate. Sometimes a new build makes a lot of sense. And sometimes a fixer upper makes a lot of sense.

Maggie:
[11:50] Well, and it’s, I think it’s good to know that. I mean, there are options that you probably didn’t think of out there. And this is one example.

Becca:
[11:53] Literally I know you and I didn’t know this was a thing.

Jewels:
[11:56] Yeah. And that’s why it’s really important to have those team members. I know I harp on this all the time. But like having a badass mortgage broker who can think outside the box and having a badass realtor who can also think outside the box.

Taylor:
[12:13] Which is not something people consider a lot. You just think, oh, I need to do it all on my own, or I just need to find whatever realtor I Google first, but it’s like actually really important to pick the right team.

Maggie:
[12:13] And Julie’s definitely said a bunch of times. I know I’ve said it too, there are some bad realtors out there.

Taylor:
[12:29] So many bad ones. More bad than good.

Becca:
[12:30] They’re really bad actually. Like a lot of really bad ones.

Loren:
[12:34] Well, how many have I turned off, turned off my friends from some bad ones and turned them on to Zach? I feel like I’m just funneling uh, clients to Zach at this point.

Jewels:
[12:44] He appreciates it a lot.

Becca:
[12:44] I feel like you’re going to like hear us sing like all the praises for Zach over the course of this episode, because we all have experiences with him in real estate. But if you don’t have, listeners, if you don’t have a real estate agent who is actively convincing you not to buy the house that you’re in love with, then it’s probably a bad real estate agent.

Taylor:
[13:14] They’re just like showing you the house and they’re like, yeah, this looks good. You want to put in an offer? Which is 99% of realtors. Don’t, just please find someone else.

Loren:
[13:23] And I think that was so surprising for me because Zach was the first person I ever interacted with to sell me a house. And so for him to walk in and immediately be like, these cabinets are shitty. This is terrible. The foundation is cracked. I was so taken aback by it, but now I realize how fortunate it was because I’ve been hearing other stories from other people and they’ve been like, oh yeah, we just walk in and the realtor says it’s great. And then I realized, oh no, that’s terrible. It’s the worst thing you could do.

Jewels:
[13:52] Yeah, it can be super demoralizing, looking at real estate with Zach, um I think we’ve all experienced.

Loren:
[13:58] But it should be. I mean, you’re about to put down a lot of money, you’re about to put down almost all of your savings and it should be a hard decision. You know, it should be a difficult thing to pull the trigger on.

Maggie:
[14:15] It’s funny you say that because I texted a house to Taylor like two days ago and she said, did you send this Zack? And I said, no, Zach doesn’t like my fun ideas.

Taylor:
[14:18] We’re buying it. Don’t show Zach. Don’t show him. Don’t show him. Yeah we’re going to buy a house behind Zach’s back um, secret house.

Jewels:
[14:30] These are secret houses.

Becca:
[14:35] I tend to not send Zach houses that I truly love because I’m just like bracing. But today I did it, I did it today.

Loren:
[14:42] What did he say?

Becca:
[14:45] Um, he said we should get coffee sometime.

Maggie:
[14:50] Ooh.

Loren:
[14:42] Wow, brutal.

Becca:
[14:56] Okay. So you got your construction loan. How – this is such an in-depth comment and this like happened so long ago, but like you got this construction loan, assuming through the like great assistance from your real estate folks and your home loan mortgage folks. And then yeah, how do you feel about that purchase now? Like talk to us about it. That’s what a lot of people are afraid of. They buy this house and then they everyone’s afraid of buying their house because they think it’s a mistake or it might be a mistake. How do you feel?

Jewels:
[15:29] Okay, so the process was both very fun because I really liked, Zach and I got to totally redesign the house. We kept the same footprint, but the way that the house looks, like we took down some walls, we turned it from a 31a 22. We put in totally different windows that really change sort of the character. The face of the house brought a lot of light in, you know. So there are a lot of those fun decisions. But also we picked everything in the house, which is a lot of decisions to make for your first.

Taylor:
[16:02] Yeah, and it looks beautiful, I don’t know ya’ll made it look like that.

Loren:
[16:05] It is a beautiful house, Yeah, your floors, I’m obsessed with your floors.

Becca:
[16:10] I’m obsessed with everything in the house. You got the construction, you got the houe.

Jewels:
[16:16] Okay. Yes there were a lot of fun aspects and then it was also super demoralizing because the actual construction in theory could have been done in three months but city permits take forever in Austin and then construction took maybe twice as long and then, even though the house was completely done, you can’t move in until all the city permits are closed and the city of Austin issues a certificate of occupancy. Which we waited a long time on. So we were unable to actually move into the house we were spending all this money on for a year.

Loren:
[16:49] For a year?

Jewels:
[16:50] Which is a very long time to be in limbo. Not sure of when you actually and you don’t want to make any plans because you think it might be done soon and it just stretches on and on and on.

Loren:
[17:34] So did you feel like you had made a mistake during that time?

Jewels:
[17:37] No. Yeah, no I was very excited about the house. Um, I did have sort of like your wedding moment, you were talking about where the money has run out because with the construction loan, like you have the contractor price out what it’s going to cost to do the project and that gets submitted and that’s part of the loan, like it’s enough to buy the house and do the construction, and then you make some expensive decisions because you want three showerheads in your master shower in your 800 square foot house. And I do not regret that decision but it did mean we had to start like forking money out of our own pocket on the side, which was okay but then also like we have a personal relationship with our builder, like he’s a friend and one of the last payments we were having some trouble making which is one of those awkward terrible situations. Um, and then right before, so I… this might be too much for this podcast.

Taylor:
[18:09] We can fix it in post.

Loren:
[18:12] It’s not.

Jewels:
[18:13] It all almost hit the fan. Yes, because I was working as a contractor for a software company here in town making a lot of money when we knew we were going to be trying to buy a house. I made an agreement with them where I became an employee and I made less on salary that I made contracting. It was like a bit of a deal for them and gave me W2 salary which made me look really good for the mortgages and um, I was really just part of a clean up crew when they were getting ready to IPO. And then that ended, like they IPO’ed, and I was still just sort of there but my role wasn’t super necessary and I was really expensive for the team I was on. And so, when the IPO layoffs start happening, my purpose for being at the company is long over. And the day came when I got my layoff notice. Nice little meeting, which was like both such a relief because I was so burned out and I was done, like I prefer having a lot of agency over my work. I like to be doing new things all the time. And it had really just reached that like stagnant point. So I was like really happy and we had not refinanced our mortgage yet, so really had to pull some crazy shenanigans in order to get that done within, and there’s a time limit you can have the construction loan for and we’d already like had to tap into an extension, and we were now behind on taxes.

Becca:
[19:39] See this is like, okay, this makes like everything about y’all make so much sense to me.

Jewels:
[19:39] Yes, tell me more.

Becca:
[19:47] Well, it’s just like that is like a situation that I can’t even comprehend as a 31 one year old. Like I cannot imagine entering this housing situation where it’s like, okay, we can get this very weird particular loan under the certain parameters. Also, I hate my job and there’s a chance it might end soon. But if we still work within these teeny tiny parameters, we can make it work. But also we have to work really fast and there’s a lot of pressure.

Jewels:
[20:16] Yeah, there’s no room for error and everything’s gonna go wrong.

Becca:
[20:20] Yeah. Versus me. I am the complete opposite. So it makes a lot of sense.

Jewels:
[20:22] Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so anyways, we managed to pull it all off, we move in. I love the house, love, love, love the house so much. I don’t think there’s been a single day I’ve woken up in that house and had to regret about it.

Loren:
[20:41] It’s a great house.

Jewels:
[20:43] I’m very glad at this point that now despite the financial issues we got ourselves into during that time where I thought maybe we won’t be able to keep the house or we’re going to have to rent it out and go live in Mexico City for a while and work remotely or something.

Loren:
[20:56] Oh no.

Jewels:
[20:59] That’s not, this is not a sacrifice, but it would have been tricky to like, you know, move with the dog. It’s not simple. Yeah, I love it so much. And I’m very happy to be at the point where we have our finances sort of back on track. It did take us a couple of years because of what had happened. Work wise, we went down really hard for a few years, as far as credit cards and taxes and now we have recovered from that and we’ll hopefully never find ourselves in that situation again because we’re running with so much more buffer than we had at that point.

Maggie:
[21:35] I’ve got more questions. Follow up questions.

Becca:
[21:38] Well, I feel like I’ve asked Julie 14,000 questions actually.

Jewels:
[21:44] Maybe I should, I was saying I should maybe have mentioned two other things that really did factor into our decision. And that was that having been very nomadic and staying in a lot of Airbnbs the year before, that helped us make a lot of decisions about our house when we were designing it because we’d stayed in so many different places, we knew exactly what we needed, and designs we liked and designs we didn’t, so it really played into us designing a great house for our needs. And also we bought a house in a great location with the intention that as we continue to be nomadic part of the year, we could Airbnb it out so that it would cover itself, which we immediately did right from the start, like while we still just had a mattress on the floor. Without a bed frame. We put it on a rug, it was nice and we said that room was Japanese style at ground level.

Loren:
[22:39] I’m sure they ate it up.

Jewels:
[22:39] They did, they did. First, I mean it felt great, I think it’s a really good health move to force yourself to get on and off the ground once a day.

Taylor:
[22:44] I thought it was intentional when I first saw it.

Jewels:
[22:53] I should probably put my bed back on the floor.

Becca:
[22:55] I love, like I wish there was an audio, like if you just recorded ya’ll selves, like literally just the act of getting up every morning.

Jewels:
[23:02] Well I did have to move into the guest room for quite awhile my crazy ankle incident because I couldn’t walk so I definitely couldn’t get on and off the floor.

Becca:
[23:16] No, you would literally collapse and have someone hoist you up.

Jewels:
[23:22] Um, okay, so definitely bought it with the intention of Airbnb and then also we bought a decent sized lot with a fairly small house so we knew that we could build an auxiliary dwelling unit or second house in the back at some point. So it had a lot of upside development potential down the road.

Taylor:
[23:44] So is there any update to that, with like your kind of plans for building a back house?

Jewels:
[23:46] We definitely are going to build one at some point but that’s last on our investment priorities because we already have the land locked down for that project and we want to buy other properties, and the land prices for those are going up. So we’d rather lock in those other properties. And then once we have all the properties we want which isn’t a ton, it’ll be like less than five total probably. Then we’ll circle back and we’ll start doing development projects either on those properties or for our own. Yeah that’s, I think that’s all I have to say about….

Becca:
[24:23] Okay, so that was a very complicated and beautiful story that I think actually would be like super, super helpful to a lot of people. Um okay, let’s move on to Maggie.

Maggie:
[24:35] Are we going in order of who purchased their house?

Becca:
[24:37] We are chronologically moving right now. Um, and more more importantly, we’re clockwise, moving, skipping me as the non-homeowner.

Jewels:
[24:40] Gives a nice feel to like…

Maggie:
[24:44] Got you. Got you.

Jewels:
[24:46] I think the chronological is nice though because we have all bought in Austin. It gives a feel for how the housing market’s changed over time.

Taylor:
[24:55] True. Yeah. Did you feel like it was easy to find your, sorry – one last question. Did you feel like it was easy to find, like were there lots of properties available for sale that were desirable? Or was it the market still pretty like…?

Jewels:
[24:57] Austin has been in a housing shortage for a while as far as like… a healthy market I believe is considered to be six months of supply on the market at any given time. Like if 100 houses will sell in six months, if I went and looked at how many houses available, there should be 100. That’s a healthy market where like the buyers are in a good position and the sellers in a good position. The power dynamics very balanced.

Loren:
[25:30] Do you remember what it was in 2014?

Jewels:
[25:32] I don’t, but I know that at least for the last few years Austin was already under like six weeks of supply Last year it went down to like 1-2 weeks of supply. It’s like nothing. So I think we’re pretty limited by our price range back then for sure. Um and we looked at a lot of stuff. We were pretty open to what we were willing to move into. We weren’t like, oh we need a three bedroom, two bath in the specific part of town and we need it to be maintenance free like that. We were like show us everything. It’s fine. So I don’t really remember, I mean it took a while. We looked for a few months at least.

Taylor:
[26:11] Okay Mags, give us your story.

Maggie:
[26:13] It is interesting, my story is very different than Julie’s story. Uh I think it’s important to note that I never wanted to own a home. I didn’t want to design a home, I didn’t want to pay for things that were expensive.

Taylor:
[26:23] I think it’s important to note that you didn’t think you were going to be alive this far in life.

Maggie:
[26:29] I didn’t think I was going to live long enough to own a home. I didn’t want to have a job, but like, I wanted nothing to do with it. Um, and the only reason I bought a home was for utility purposes in that I saw it as a way to cover expenses or to make it so that I could quit my job sooner. So it wasn’t, I want to have a home that’s really beautiful and nice to live in, it was, can I find something that pays… that I can make less than what I’m paying in rent, work with the mortgage. So I know I talked to Zach about it and I was like, I’d be down to buy, or he basically convinced me because I was… I had a job, with the W2 and I committed to having a job for at least a year, and he was like, well, if you’re gonna have a job for a year with the W2, you might want to think about buying a house right now, because…

Jewels:
[27:20] If this is the only time you’re going to have a W2 in the rest of your life Maggie, now is the time to buy a house.

Maggie:
[27:22] Yeah, Zach told me that, and I listened and I was like, he makes some good points, he makes some strong points, this guy does. Um, and I was like, well, if I’m buying a house, that’s the, that’s what I want. I want it to be a tool. Um, I don’t need it to be nice. I don’t need it to be…

Taylor:
[27:42] I love that. A tool to financial freedom, essentially.

Maggie:
[27:45] Yeah. So I wanted something either like a duplex or something with two units or at least something with enough rooms that I could rent some out and have most of my mortgage covered. Zach knew this, called me one day and was like, hey, there’s this house, there’s a front house and a back house, you want it. And I was like, sure make an offer. Um, I looked at it one day, Julie came with me. We looked at it for maybe 15 minutes and I said, cool, I want that one and that’s the only house we looked at. And yeah, bought the house.

Loren:
[28:15] WOW!

Taylor:
[28:17] That’s so funny.

Loren:
[28:18] What year?

Maggie:
[28:18] 2018.

Becca:
[28:20] This is a wild story.

Maggie:
[28:23] I was like, I don’t want to look, I don’t want to own a house. So I don’t want to look at houses that you say this will meet my needs, buy it.

Jewels:
[28:30] If Zach and chris call and literally say this is the one, you need to buy this house.

Maggie:
[28:36] I was like, okay, I believe you. I was like, I believe you, sure, yeah, here’s, what do I need to sign. And so they, yeah Zach and Chris helped me with putting in an offer, I ended up getting it which was great.
It was very stressful and I think me not wanting to be a homeowner probably made it more stressful because there’s a lot of doubt of like why am I even doing this, is this the right move.
Like I don’t… do I even really want this, but I ended up going through with it and it was very stressful, and then I ended up inheriting some bad tenants right off the bat which gave me more doubt and then things started breaking in both the house is pretty much right off the bat which gave me more doubt. And so I was pretty stressed there for a while and I wasn’t living in the house for the first 6-8 months that I owned it because I had tenants that I inherited. So my tenants that I inherited, their rent wasn’t covering the full mortgage. So I was paying for a house that I wasn’t living in and I was paying very expensive rent for an apartment in Austin.

Taylor:
[29:41] Was someone living in the back house and the front house?

Maggie:
[29:43] Yeah, I had tenants in both. Um, so and I was just like bleeding money for like….

Loren:
[29:48] Was that also, um a tough role to take on as a landlord all of a sudden?

Maggie:
[29:50]It was a little hard because at the time my job was… I was traveling like five days a week.

Loren:
[29:59] Right.

Becca:
[30:02] So how did you manage that?

Maggie:
[30:08] I don’t know honestly. Like Zach came and helped me with a bunch of stuff. Yeah, Zach and Julie came and helped me quite a few times when I was out of town, I was like the ACs broken, can y’all go over there and like look at it real quick and they would they would run over and look at it for me which is really nice and then just like, calling people and being like hey plumber, something’s broken, can you go to this house and then I call the tenants me and be like there’s gonna be a plumber there in an hour are you home, and they’d be like yeah sure. Um, so just like fucking scrambling for a long time there and like I said I was bleeding money for a long time. It felt, I knew that it would long term be a good choice like the whole time I was like long term this is going to work out but in the short term it was really hard. I definitely had some very bad moments with the tenants in the early days, and I was very angry and unhappy about now having a full time job that I worked 80 hours a week and being a landlord to people I didn’t like, but eventually they moved out and I moved in and then I kind of remodeled a little bit, made it how I wanted, it looked really nice, a house that I never wanted ended up being a house that I fell in love with.

Becca:
[31:15] Oh my god, that’s sweet.

Taylor:
[31:17] That is just the quintessential love story. I didn’t like him at first.

Maggie:
[31:25] So the back house which is one bedroom, one bath that I lived in for almost three years, um I really have a strong emotional attachment to and Becca is now going to be moving back there. Um and me and Phil moved into the front house which I did… I’ve probably put close to $60,000 into the front house since I bought it.

Becca:
[31:46] Doing what?

Maggie:
[31:48] So like $20,000 in foundation repair And then like a $20,000 remodel after the foundation repair because all the floors were cracked and the door frames were broken and the windows shattered when we got the foundation repaired.

Becca:
[32:01] So, okay, this as a novice, did you pay this outright? Or did you like somehow take a loan out and wrap it into your mortgage? How does it work when there’s $60,000 to pay?

Maggie:
[32:12] So the foundation was wrapped into my mortgage which was great. And then after that I waited, I basically told the tenant who was living in the front house at the time, like we’re going to be doing work on the house. You can leave if you want to leave, it’s going to be a fucking… it’s gonna be bad, it’s gonna be a fucking wreck or you can stay, like your choice and she was like, I’m gonna stay. So she stayed and so I basically spent the next six months re-saving money again in order to fix the house. And she just lived in it with like broken doors and like holes in the floor and broken windows and shit.

Becca:
[32:49] Did she have like a really cheap rent or did she just love that house?

Maggie:
[32:51] I think I did cut her rent for a couple of months there because it was pretty bad.

Jewels:
[32:57] As you’re like running over there with a foam gun to like foam the cracks along like, between the wall and the floor. So the cockroaches…

Maggie:
[33:02] Yeah. And there was just, like no door in the house shut anymore.

Loren:
[33:03] Oh my god, cockroaches.

Maggie:
[33:08] And she was like, it’s fun because like, I live just here with just me. Like she had a partner that was not, that was like stationed in the army so he wasn’t there. She’s like, I really like the outdoors so you know, it’s not so bad.

Loren:
[33:18] Wow.

Maggie:
[33:21] So yeah, then I spent like the that next six months re-saving my money so that as soon as her lease was up I could remodel before new tenants came in and then did that.

Taylor:
[33:22] WOW!

Jewels:
[33:32] And you did like drywall repair, re-taped, painted, new floors, fixed some stuff in the kitchen.

Maggie:
[33:34] Reframed all the doors, fixing windows re-tiled, like new floors in the whole house basically.

Becca:
[33:44] And you just paid for this outright or like piece by piece, you didn’t have to take out a loan for these remodelingss.

Maggie:
[33:46] Um, so that remodel was about 10,000 or 20,000. I did about 10,000 in cash and 10,000 on my credit card. And then I got new tenants. It was all like playing catch up for the first two years of owning the house was just like, now I got to get this, like I have to have to get this done because I need new tenants to pay this rent because I can’t afford it by myself and like then something else breaks. It’s like we don’t have a choice, you have to fix it.

Taylor:
[34:17] Well that’s the thing buying a new house, like add on 50 grand for repairs and fixes and changes and everything. Like it’s going to cost you way more than you think.

Maggie:
[34:25] Exactly. And now I’ve just moved in the front house and all the expenses that come with just a new move, new furniture, stuff like that. So I feel like I’ve always been playing a little bit of catch up with the house but since I bought it I refinanced into a lower interest rate. So my mortgage has decreased, rent prices in Austin have increased so like I can see, that hill like becoming easier and easier as I continue to move forward in time and I think it’s going to keep going in that direction where over time, like the rent prices will keep covering more of the mortgage and that dream that I had when I bought the house of it being this tool to financial freedom. Like I am getting closer and I can feel it and it is worth it but it was hard.

Taylor:
[35:09] Yeah, can you remind me how much your house was? I know you’ve told me but I don’t remember.

Maggie:
[35:10] Yeah, so I got it for 372 and then I escrowed another 20 for the foundation. So I paid 392 for both houses.

Becca:
[35:25] And that was 2018.

Maggie:
[35:25] 2018.

Loren:
[35:36] That’s crazy. I mean that must make you feel so good. Right. No, don’t ever sell it.

Maggie:
[35:39] It just got appraised at right at 500. But it can probably, would probably sell for closer to six or more. Hi. Yeah that was really good except I’m not going to sell it. So try not to think.

Yeah I try not to think about that number too much. Um But yeah that does feel good and like since then I’ve paid the mortgage down so it’s like there’s a pretty good chunk of money sitting in the house. Yeah.

Loren:
[35:36] That’s crazy. I mean that must make you feel so good. Right. No, don’t ever sell it.

Jewels:
[35:54] Your equity and it’s pretty good. Do you remember what your rent was at your place, the apartment you were renting, and then do you remember what it went to right after that?

Maggie:
[36:07] Oh yeah so I was renting an apartment on Manor. Um and I did like you know if you do a weird amount of months on your lease, it’s like slightly less, and I was single and didn’t like my, a lot of people living in Austin their lease is based on their school schedule or something like that, I didn’t have that. So I did like a 13-month lease. My rent was I think right at 1350 or 1400 a month. Or maybe it was like 1250 and then with bills, it’s like 1250.

Jewels:
[36:36] Yeah, I remember it was like 12 something.

Maggie:
[36:39] And then I moved out and when I was moving out I was like man pretty sure that rent prices have gone up a lot, I should just sublet this place to a friend. And I went to the front desk and I was like how much if I were to like start a new lease right now and get this place, they’re like oh it’s like $1700 a month. So in one year the price of the apartment I was living in was a one bed, one bath was like 800 square feet I think maybe even less, 600 square feet, went up $500.

Jewels:
[37:08] And I think that Zach, yeah, I think zach was showing someone apartments not long after that and they went to your building. And at that time it had already jumped like to 18 or 1900 a month for a one and one

Becca:
[37:20] For one bed, one bath. I know. Even Andy, so me and Andy are moving into Maggie’s back house and he lives in a little one bed, one bath apartment that’s not fucking… it’s like a shitty old apartment, which is what most of us, you know lived in for a while, myself included for five years and nothing fancy about it. And it’s north north north Austin, technically not Austin, like he can’t get a library card in Austin.

Jewels:
[37:48] Just his pocket neighborhood is not Austin.

Becca:
[37:49] Yeah, like his zip code is Austin but it’s not incorporated within Austin and he’s not in Pflugerville, so we can’t get a library card in either city, which I think is really fucked up.

Maggie:
[37:58] That’s bogus.

Jewels:
[37:59] This is an education desert.

Becca:
[38:01] It’s bogus. Anyways, so he’s right, it is. So he’s like super north Austin and his apartment’s like 860 for a one bed one bath. And of course we’re moving but he would have renewed it would have jumped to 1200 for this little shitty old one bed, one bath.

Loren:
[38:21] It feels like things are getting up to New York prices, like I mean you’re not there yet, but we’re on the way.

Jewels:
[38:21] Fast. Okay, Taylor tell us about your home buying experience.

Maggie:
[38:32] I want you to start with when is the moment that you were like, the same thing I asked Julie. When did you go from paying rent? Buying a house is more worth my time than paying rent?
I think that is a pivotal moment to have. And so I want to know about that.

Taylor:
[38:48] Absolutely. I never thought about owning a home before I moved back to Austin. Like I just never something I was interested me because I just didn’t have a lot of money and I never thought I would. So I just kind of didn’t think that like settling down and getting a home and like doing all of that was for me much. Like y’all, I thought I was going to be traveling and like fucking blowing through my money and like living it large until I died. Like that was my plan. And then my dad got sick when I was living in LA, and so I was like well fuck I’m moving home like the shit’s real, like I need to be somewhere else, fuck LA. So I came back home and I was working remotely for the company in LA that I had been working for when I left and you know, helping out around the house and I was living with my parents and it just felt like I needed to do something to feel like I had agency or like some kind of control over my own life because I felt like I was just kind of back where I started and it’s like well I’m living in Austin again with my parents. Like I hadn’t lived with my parents in college but like it just felt like I was not moving forward and I wanted to have a different experience. So I just started looking on Redfin because my brother had always talked about buying homes and but yeah, like out in LA, which would like, I would literally never be able to afford a house in LA. And I don’t want to buy a house in LA. But yeah I was just like kind of going on Redfin and like looking because I thought it would be fun just because I like looking. I’ve always liked looking at houses just because I like houses and I think they’re pretty. So I like to look at them not to buy just to look at.
So I was looking at Redfin and then um just like kind of evolved. I was like, be nice to have a house and why am I paying so much for for rent when I could own something. And Austin is a pretty fucking cool city and I like being here and I have a ton of people here that I love and it’d just be nice to like feel like I was an adult and not just living with, my parents or like moving around a lot. Um, yeah I just kind of evolved naturally I think to like. That, and then obviously we start hanging out with Julie and Zach and Zach’s a real estate agent and I just never had any kind of, anyone to help guide me through that process and understanding of the market. And so when I started looking at houses and started talking to Zach about it just kind of felt more real.
Like it was a more real possibility because finally I had some context for like the market and understanding the market and where to look and what to look at and you know what I could actually afford versus what I thought I could afford and all that stuff.

Maggie:
[41:17] So for timeline purposes, we got Julie’s 2014, I’m 2018, you’re at the beginning here of 2020.

Taylor:
[41:25] Yes, right. Um, yeah right before the shutdown I bought a house.

Loren:
[41:30] Oh wow.

Taylor:
[41:34] No actually right after the shutdown, it was in April.

Jewels:
[41:37] You are a crazy motherfucker.

Taylor:
[41:39] Yeah. Yeah. Well how did I… it just felt like surreal. I mean everything. It was weird because everything was crazy, like my dad, like not only on a global level, like my dad had died that January and it just felt like nothing mattered anymore, you know? It was just like well the world is fucking crazy. Everything’s burning, nothing. Nothing I believed was true.

Loren:
[42:05] You had a really bad 2020.

Taylor:
[42:07] Yeah, like literally everything I believed was a lie and I think a lot of people felt that way. A lot of like privileged white people probably felt that way. It’s like oh everything I’ve been taught is a lie, literally a lie and like the world is terrible for most people. Um, so there was kind of that in the background, I was like fuck it like let’s buy a house, why not? It can’t get any worse, let’s see what the fuck happens.

Maggie:
[42:27] Let’s see what happens here.

Taylor:
[42:30] Um, and so it was one of those days where I was looking at Redfin again, which for a while I mean me and Becca talk about it’s like every day on Redfin looking at shit and I found this house that we’re currently sitting in and it was listed for 325. The lot looked really big. It looked like something that was like feasible, like in reach. And so I sent it to Zach and I was like we should go look at this and he’s like yeah let’s go look like right now. So like, that like, it was like that day or the next day. We like went and looked at it and they were accepting offers through the weekend and then they like, shut down offers on Sunday or something. I can’t remember the exact, but yes, best and final by Sunday. Yeah.

Jewels:
[43:05] Like a best and final.

Taylor:
[43:10] And I remember when we, and I had at that point already looked at some houses with Zach and nothing that we looked at, he seemed very excited about like, even like the nicer houses. He was like, yeah, you could do this, but like, whatever. So when we looked at this house, it was one of those situations where Zach was really excited about it. And that, that’s when I knew I was like, okay, this is like, I’m not just looking at it through rosy colored… eyes? I never get this fucking phrase, right, this is like the fourth time on this podcast I fucked up this phrase, rosie eyeballs.

Jewels:
[43:43] Rosie eyeballs.

Maggie:
[43:45] I like rosie eyeballs.

Taylor:
[43:46] I’ve never yeah, like every house I looked, I’m like, oh, this is great, we should buy. And he’s like, no, but this was the one house where he was like, yes, you should buy this.

Loren:
[43:55] Was there anything in particular?

Taylor:
[43:59] Yeah it was mostly Maggie living down the street. Um, no it’s just like the lot was really big for the price and I think that big enough to, we could build a house in the back and there’s so much potential in the neighborhood, it’s like rapidly changing and there’s like you know a lot of people moving in and it just seemed like it was in a good location, just the location and the size of the lot. I think mostly like the house is in pretty decent shape for being a house that’s from the fucking 1950s. Like yeah there’s some cracks in the walls and stuff like that but it’s like the H.Vac was new, the roof was new, like all this stuff that would have cost me a lot of money upfront was in pretty good like new condition. So that was also like a factor and yeah just it was a good size, you know it just, it just kind of, it’s like, yeah yeah it’s great. The one thing we did is we knock down this wall in the center right here because it was closing in the living room.

Maggie:
[44:50] And it’s just a cool house.

Taylor:
[44:59] Yeah that was my mom, my mom, all my mom’s idea but it was a great idea so yeah and that’s that’s how we came to… oh and obviously I had ask for, I offered a lot more than the price that they listed it for.

Jewels:
[45:15] They did not price it correctly.

Taylor:
[45:16] They did not and Zach totally called that. He was like if you put in 350, because the house was listed at 325, and I was like, well what’s like a competitive offer? Like 350? He was like, no, if you put in 350 it’s going to be you and seven other people that also think that 350 is competitive and then you’re going against some other people and there’s going to be one or two people that immediately outbid that. So he was like, you should go in aggressive, like 375. And I was like, at the time I was like, that’s a lot over my, my budget was like 300 but he was right, like we put in 375 and they accepted it and there was 10, there was10 offers or so on the house. So the fact that like, I had no experience, I had no money and Zach got me this house was like, pretty shocking to me. I was like, it didn’t even feel real when he called me to tell me. I was like, are you sure?

Becca:
[46:05] I have a question about that and like maybe it’s for all of you, but to start with Taylor. So I know I have a friend who bought a house and then like, a neighborhood that’s really lovely here in Austin called Mueller, and her like, her husband is a firefighter and she’s a, she was at the time of nonprofit like public relations person. So they wrote this lovely little letter and it’s like, and she’s like, yeah, we got a picture in front of the fucking fire engine and like, and like sent in a little like, this is our wholesome family, We want to move into this wholesome neighborhood. Anyways, my question for you is like, was there like a heartfelt letter that Zach crafted with like a picture and you were like, I’ve moved here for these. So did any of you all have that?

Taylor:
[46:51] Zach’s like staunchly against it.

Jewels:
[46:54] Well, okay, so this is actually a really interesting ethical issue in the real estate industry. Zach will have clients do that if the people request it because that’s putting all the ethical issue on them. But here’s the deal – picking someone because they’re a cute white couple and he’s a firefighter and she works in a nonprofit is extreme discrimination that you can easily take to court and be like, I made a competitive offer on this and they chose those people because of their skin color and background and who they wanted in the neighborhood, where this is almost more like resumes nowadays, you know, you don’t put your picture on it. Not a lot of, you know, stuff that identifies your race or background. This is, yeah, Zach definitely does not ask for those things if they do listings because it’s not how you should pick who gets to live somewhere.

Taylor:
[47:45] Which I never thought about, honestly, that is a really good point. But it can be, like, even if the person reading it isn’t thinking of it that way, it absolutely subconsciously it’s going to affect like who they’re picking.

Jewels:
[47:48] Yeah, we have our biases and we like people who are similar to us, even if we don’t realize it that way. And if you’re looking at a cute family and you’re like, oh, they have the same dog I had as my childhood dog that affects it in a way that is… yeah.

Maggie:
[48:11] Yeah, my experience is like a decent amount of space between me and the buyer. Like I never spoke to the buyer, I didn’t know their name, like nothing about them. It was strictly transactional, like money goes to the bank kind of thing.

Taylor:
[48:24] Yeah, and I yeah, them because I always thought that that’s what people do is like, write the nice letter to try to try to make your case. But it was interesting working with that because he’s just like, not at all about that, he’s like, I just want to make us the most competitive, like, attractive offer to the buyer and that’s going to get you ahead, which I think it does because bottom line, like, some people might not give a shit about your background, they just want the highest bid or you know, whatever.

Maggie:
[48:46] That would be me. If I were selling my house. You mean the most money? I’ll take that one.

Taylor:
[48:50] Yeah, same, same. Yeah, but yeah, and I was also going to mention the only way I was able to get my house is my mom co-signed with me. Um, I would not have been able to get a mortgage or a loan otherwise, because I’m not a W-2, I’m a freelancer and the banks don’t like freelancers, they think we’re useless uh, moochers on society that don’t add any value to the world because we don’t have W2s, and real jobs apparently. Yeah, so I begged my mom to co-sign and I was like shamelessly was like, please go sign this out with me. And luckily, she was very hesitant, she did not want to do it, which very understandably, she didn’t want to have another mortgage in her name. She was kinda like, she’s, you know, towards like, she’s in her 60’s, she’s got her house, she’s got her job, like, she doesn’t really want to take on this new potential, you know, whatever. So that’s completely understandable on her part, the fact that she finally agreed to it was, um shocking and I’m very, very grateful every day.

Maggie:
[50:00] Have you had any moments of regret since buying the house?

Taylor:
[50:03] Right, since, much like you, after I bought the house, I realized how much more money I needed to spend. And so that was kind of stressful spending all that money, like getting things ready and I re-tiled the kitchen floor and stuff like that. But it was never, it was more just like a worry of not being able to pay it back or getting into a, getting into more debt because at that time I was still in debt and not being able to pay my mortgage. Like those were my biggest worries. It wasn’t like I regret buying this house, but it was like fuck, like if I don’t pay my mortgage, like I am really deep in shit. And also I didn’t want to put my mom in that position because it’s not just me that gets in trouble now, it’s now her because she’s on the hook. Um, and I really would never want to put her in that position to where she had to like pay my mortgage for me, I would feel like the worst piece of shit in the world. So um…

Maggie:
[50:53] Part of me was like worst case scenario, I sell the house and like, call it.

Taylor:
[50:58] Yes, that’s how I felt too. I was like worst case scenario, I just fucking sell the house and I take a hit on whatever interests I paid, which is not going to be that like, bad compared to, you know, for closing or whatever, but, you know, since then it’s been great and I’m really happy and I love this house and I’m excited to have something that will hopefully grow in time, over time.

Loren:
[51:19] I feel like most of us have had good buying experiences. We need to find somebody that like regretted buying their house.

Taylor:
[51:19] Yeah, I know, right? Yeah.

Jewels:
[51:27] There are a lot of those people.

Taylor:
[51:29] Because they didn’t work with Zach from Grassroots Realty. Check it out people. Uh anyway, Loren, tell us all about your… also I think you should preface it with a little bit of background of like, you know, living in New York and like, just, that kind of gives us more context.

Loren:
[51:44] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, up until last September we’d been in New York for 10 years, I’d been in New York for 10 years, Chris had been in New York for like 16 years, something crazy like that. Yeah and yeah, I mean the option of buying in new York is just never on the table. It’s… you’re forever a renter there. Unless you’re uber wealthy, though now that we own a house, we look back and we think we should have figured it out back in those early days, If we had known that we were going to stay in New York as long as we did, you know, it would have been such a good investment at the time but I don’t want to regret it but everyone I know in New York rents and where were we at by the time we left? We were at 3100 a month for one bedroom. Yeah, yeah. Um, but you have to understand we prioritized location and we we didn’t want to be in Manhattan but we wanted to be close for work. So based on where we were, we were living in Long Island city and that’s basically the closest neighborhood in Queens to New York, we were right next to a very popular subway station. So we were in a great location. It was basically like Julie picking her spot because of where it was located. We did the same thing with us. It was also a good apartment, it was a decent sized apartment, 760 square feet. Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but in New York, it’s a lot, it’s a lot and we had a one, a full one bedroom, there was a gym in the building and we had a really great rooftop that overlooked the city. So sounds like a lot of money, but based on all the things we got in New York, it was probably pretty standard for like what we were getting. And I never considered buying throughout this whole time just because we were living paycheck to paycheck for a really long time. And in fact, I think most of my friends in New York live paycheck to paycheck unless they’re really savvy, just because there’s so many different things you have to pay for when you’re there, you have to have a subway pass. I mean granted, I bet a bunch of my friends were saving money during the pandemic because I canceled my subway pass, I canceled my gym membership, I cancelled like all these things, you know that you didn’t need during the pandemic.

Taylor:
[54:10] Well, also, the whole point of living in New York City is to live in New York City. You’re going out all the time, you don’t stay in and save money and cook, You go out and eat, you go out to bars, like that is the entire point of living there.

Loren:
[54:14] I’ll get to that in a minute because, I know, because that’s that’s the very big part of why we left. And so eventually you’re like, how am I going to afford living in this city? No one can afford it. We all just figure it out when we’re there. So I never considered buying in New York. And then at one point we had moved into this apartment and the apartment that we lived in before we left was my favorite apartment. I’ve had some really shitty apartments in New York, none that I really decorated or cared about. But this last one I really loved and the, we rented it from the guy who owned it and one day he said, hey, if you guys want to buy the place from me, you’re like, give me an offer. And I was like, okay, yeah, I was like $1?

Maggie:
[55:04] $5?

Loren:
[55:10] So yeah, how much do you think it cost?

Maggie:
[55:13] Oh, okay. Like realistic? This is the 700 square feet, good location.

Loren:
[55:18] 760 sq ft, right next to Manhattan, but it’s in Queens. Yeah.

Maggie:
[55:24] I honestly have no idea. So this is gonna… Taylor, are you gonna guess after me? What? Okay, I’m, yeah, I’m going to guess 1.4 million. What’s funny?

Becca:
[55:24] Can I guess? I want to be in on this, I don’t know anything.

Loren:
[55:35] Oh kay, it’s not that much money.

Maggie:
[55:37] I don’t understand New York.

Loren:
[55:40] Um he, well first let me say first, we were like let’s offer 600 because I was like, I know things are expensive in New York but I don’t know how expensive they are, you know, and he basically laughed at us. He was like, oh well I bought, I bought it at around 550 like I’m not going to sell it for 600. He’s like, I’ll sell to you for 1000 per square foot. So he wanted 760 $760,000 for it. I wrote one bed.

Becca:
[56:09] 1000 per square foot? Make me a tank top that says 1000 per square foot.

Loren:
[56:12] Okay, let me, let me also explain. The gym was in the basement and it was a bunch of really old Bowflex machines. Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t like a fancy gym. And another thing to consider too was we were in a very developing neighborhood. They were putting sky rises to our to our left and all of those sky rises had fancy… one of them had a freaking basketball court indoors, you know. It was just an insane thing for this like dopey little apartment complex which was nice. It was built in 2008 I think, for them to think that they could compete with these really…

Maggie:
[56:59] Yeah, like where’s my basketball gym buddy?

Loren:
[57:02] Yeah, where’s my basketball gym, where’s my racquet ball court? But anyway he even came and visited and was like, you know, I didn’t think I could buy a place either, but we talked with our realtor guy and we figured it, you know, I figured it out, I think you guys can do it because I think he just really wanted to unload the place on us and I was just like I can’t, we just can’t afford that and, it wasn’t just that we couldn’t afford it at the time, but I get back to this moral situation to, it was like how can I possibly spend this much money on a one bedroom apartment? And the place was kind of falling apart, like the door handles were coming off, you know, uh we were having some plumbing issues. There are a lot of things we ended up fixing ourselves, which I did not want to do because we were the renters, but it was just easier for us to go out and buy a pipe from Home Depot rather than call up the guy and say, hey, this broke reimburse us, you know.

Jewels:
[58:04] I have trouble even picturing Home Depots in New York City. What do those look like?

Loren:
[58:07] Oh, well there’s one in Queens, there was one in Queens that we would drive to all the time, it was actually pretty close to us and it had a full parking lot and everything, it really, it felt like, it felt like uh you know, wasn’t supposed to be there, like an, or whatever, right?

Becca:
[58:25] Did ya’ll have a car?

Loren:
[58:26] We did, we had a car towards the end of our time there, but that was also a gift from his parents, like we would not have been able to afford a car either. So we put the dream of buying the place on hold and then the pandemic hit, well, first we had our wedding which if we had not spent money on that wedding and we could have bought the apartment already and then the pandemic hit, and New York completely just changed. And this gets back to what Taylor was saying, which was essentially your apartment in New York is not a place that you live and stay in all the time. Someone gave me this great analogy, it’s like it’s your perch and you’re a bird and you perch on it for a short period of time until you can go fly away into New York and live in it and, that and said it became a bird cage, you know, and we were stuck in it for this awful moment in time and I got really miserable for… like things got really bad. We were working non-stop and we didn’t even have a desk for each of us, like there was a desk in our bedroom and Chris took that and so I worked at the bar and then if I got uncomfortable I moved to the couch and,
just with my laptop, it was just back and forth situation.

Becca:
[59:43] You need a massage.

Loren:
[59:43] I do need a massage. Um, those first couple of months I got really low, it was really bad. Um, but then something great happened and I sold a book which uh, it’s about the first six women astronauts at Nasa when Nasa hired its first astronaut, our first women astronauts. It was during the 1978 astronaut selection and it was the most diverse amount of our class of astronauts that they’d ever picked. It was the first six women, first three African Americans and the first Asian American astronaut. This is after they’d only selected like white men for years and years and years. And so the first six women, everyone knows Sally Ride. But it could have been any of these first six women who flew first. She just happened to win out the selection process. And so that’s why everyone knows her name. But I’m kind of shining a light on the other five women too who could have easily been the first woman. But their stories are all very different and unique. It’s a great, it’s a great thing to study.

Taylor:
[1:00:50] The book’s going to be amazing.

Loren:
[1:00:51] We’ll see. We can, we’re going to cut all this out. No, kidding. That was like a big game changer because it was like oh I have this really big project I need to work on, I’m not going to stay here in New York and do this. That may seem silly to say, but it was like, I can’t write a book while we’re cooped up in our prison, in our 760 sq ft apartment. And so we were like, okay, well I knew I wanted to buy, where’s a place that is a great place to invest and also a place I want to live and Austin fit that bill. And so we started making moves to move to Austin, but before we did that, we decided to go live in my parents condo in New Orleans that they had bought as like a stopgap so that we could save up money and not pay rent for a little while. So that was definitely a big factor in the whole situation. And then we got introduced to Zach and he took us around to some of the places here in Austin and I still don’t understand how we found our place. I think it was complete, like, magic. So.

Becca:
[1:01:57] And your place, is that a new build?

Loren:
[1:01:59] It’s a new build, so it’s definitely a different situationI was not opposed to a fixer upper, but I didn’t want to do a lot of work, I didn’t want to do what Julie and Zach did, because I knew it was going to take a lot of time, but I felt like when we were looking at places, all I could find were tear down to the stud places or new builds and I think that just speaks to the scarcity that was like, emerging because we looked in December of 2020, November and December of 2020, and Zach was kind of hinting that the scarcity was on its way. He was like, we’re just at a really low level right now. And so my gut was telling me I needed to pull the trigger on something and even Zach was saying why don’t you consider renting for a little while here in Austin if this is really what you want to be? And in my heart I was like, I will never rent. I was like I’ve been renting for the last decade, I’m done renting, I didn’t moved to Austin to rent, you know?

Jewels:
[1:03:05] Find me a house or I’m out of here.

Loren:
[1:03:06] Yeah, exactly, I’m going back to New York, you know? Um, but then we found that the house on our street and it was more than I wanted to spend, but he was saying how it was a good investment and now I’m so glad that we pulled the trigger on it because I feel like spending that extra money upfront, we would have spent it on, you know, like uh yeah, fixing stuff and so we just paid for that up front rather than having to do it with like another house that needed the extra work.

Taylor:
[1:03:43] And it just fit your needs so much better, I mean you were already so anxious about getting to Austin, being settled because you were like, I need to focus on writing the book and I just need a space that feels like settled and good and ready to go and if you had done a fixer upper, it would have been another like three or four months.

Loren:
[1:03:48] Absolutely, I just knew that…

Taylor:
[1:03:57] You would have been so anxious and yeah.

Loren:
[1:04:03] I just knew that I didn’t need that on my mind right now, and then this place also had an office and I will tell you when I walk into that office, I completely switch gears and it just like, I turn into work mode and it really has been helpful. I don’t want to say that like I should have bought, or I had to buy the house to be productive, but it did kind of play into this plan of what I had envisioned for this year of our lives, and this whole year has been such an experiment for us because I’ve never done this before, I’m off of work, I’m writing this book full time,
and so I just wanted a place that made me feel happy and I think we definitely achieved it, but I still don’t, I still don’t understand how we got it because like we got under contract in December and then in January things kind of went crazy.

Jewels:
[1:04:53] Yeah. And I think at the time, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but the house was not done being built yet and the builder had decided to pre-list it, like list for sale even though it wasn’t done, which is completely unnecessary in the Austin market because you will always sell it for more by waiting a few months.

Loren:
[1:05:15] So that’s how we got it.

Jewels:
[1:05:15] Oh yeah. So when Zach saw it, when he was talking to them, they were actually pulling it off the market, they were like we’re just going to pull it off the market and sell it when it’s done. And that’s when Zach was like…

Loren:
[1:05:21] Wait a minute.

Jewels:
[1:05:26] How about if we make you an offer, would you consider it before? Because they were literally pulling it off right then.

Loren:
[1:05:33] The irony is if they had put it on when we actually moved in because it was three months before we moved in after we got into contract, they probably could have made so much more money, but I’m not upset about it.

Jewels:
[1:05:44] Oh yes, like another 100.

Loren:
[1:05:51] I mean we’ve been looking at real estate down the street from us, same square footage, even the same builder on our same street going for close to 200,000 more than what we spent, which is unreal to me.

Taylor:
[1:06:07] So what, how do you feel about the whole like first time home buying process now that you are kind of done with it? Do you feel like was it didn’t meet your expectations? Was it more, was it less? Was it scarier?

Loren:
[1:06:11] Oh, it’s definitely really scary. I was not prepared for the amount of paperwork they wanted from me. Um and there are also like, there were some moments of, of fear because I’m, I have a W-2 technically, but I’m on this book leave right now so I’m not getting a paycheck and so I wasn’t sure how that was going to be taken, but they handled it really well. Um, and also the fact that we hadn’t been approved to work remote, but we’re both kind of remote for the foreseeable future. Everything was just influx and so we’re trying to navigate that and then, but there are some other things too that I was blissfully unaware of and I’m so glad that I was, such as this appraisal gap. I did not have any idea that that was a thing that could cause stress. And I’m so glad that I didn’t because our house came in uh, over what we had offered and I was like, oh, is that would have happened? Yeah. Uh, huh.

Becca:
[1:07:34] Well, then that’s a good thing to break down, what does that mean?

Loren:
[1:07:35] Yeah Julie is probably better to explain that I am, but I had no concept of this when we were putting in the offer.

Jewels:
[1:07:35] So for example, we’re gonna do some off the cuff math again and see if this works. If you’re trying to buy a house and you got it under contract for 500,000 then you’re trying to get a mortgage minus the down payment you make, you’re trying to get a mortgage for 500,000 essentially. What the bank does while you’re under contract is they send an appraiser out to look at the property and tell the bank what it’s actually worth, because the bank will only give you enough money, that they think if you don’t pay your mortgage, they can take the house, resell it and recoup their loss. So they’re not going to give you more money than they think it’s worth. And the appraiser is telling them what it’s worth. And so the way that they do that is they look at your house and then they look at comparable properties in your neighborhood that have sold in the last couple of months and they use the sales prices from a couple months ago to base off of for what your property is worth. And then they tell the bank that and then the bank compares that with what you’ve offered. Now, this is not usually a big problem. But when we have an extremely small supply, there’s not a lot of stuff closing nearby. So there aren’t a lot of comps, and because there was such a massive influx to Austin last year from all these other cities and a lot of people in Austin who had been renting apartments who are like, I got to get out of here. I need to buy a house. Now the prices jumped really quickly. So the price is, like the value of the house was the new price. But there weren’t any comps to prove it because, and also when the entire real estate market shut down at the beginning of Covid, there were literally no comps for like two months because no one was going into houses and buying things. So we just had all of these sort of issues like the original shortage, the compounding shortage, no comps, rapidly increasing prices. So in order to get an offer accepted in this last year, you typically had to make an offer and guarantee the appraisal down to what the comps were showing. So if you’re buying that $500,000 house but the compass are only showing 400,000 as the worth, as far as the bank is concerned, you basically had to say, I’m going to pay the down payment and then I’m going to pay that gap down to whatever isn’t covered by the appraisal. So if the appraisal came back in at 400, you’re covering $100,000 in cash up front, because the bank is only going to give you the 400,000 loan, so that really means you have to bring a ton more cash to the table.

Maggie:
[1:10:18] And a bad appraiser will really ruin your day.

Loren:
[1:10:23] And it was, and you’re saying 100K. But I was hearing stories of people going 200,000 over, still not even getting the house and then the other, the people that would actually get it, they were on the hook for like 200m and their down payment and like $250,000 which…

Jewels:
[1:10:42] Exactly.

Loren:
[1:10:43] I don’t even know, and people were coughing it up.

Jewels:
[1:10:52] And now, all of those properties have closed and so there are comps now at the new prices. So this is becoming less of a thing because we’ve kind of returned, there was like a 25-30% jump in housing prices in Austin the last year. Now we’re probably gonna go back to our sort of normal trajectory which across Austin is like 12 – 13% a year. Um, but now there are like comps to support the new prices, so you don’t necessarily have to make those appraisal guarantees the same way. But it was bad last year.

Loren:
[1:11:17] So when you see a house listed now, does it feel more realistic, the number?

Jewels:
[1:11:20] A lot of realtors are really terrible at pricing properties, so maybe, maybe not, but the ability to actually look at the comments and say the bank is going to say it’s worth this much and to me it’s worth this much and to actually know if there’s a gap there or not.

Taylor:
[1:11:40] Is this apple really worth that?

Jewels:
[1:11:42] I don’t know.

Maggie:
[1:11:44] I don’t know, but I want it.

Jewels:
[1:11:49] Um, so that’s the appraisal gap in appraisal guarantee situation, which is really terrifying. And I’m really glad that your house appraisal came in at value.

Loren:
[1:11:57] Me too, me too.

Maggie:
[1:11:58] Well, and Julie and I just recently both went through a bad appraisal situation.

Jewels:
[1:12:00] Oh my gosh, with refis.

Maggie:
[1:12:08] It’s a whole long, we’ll have to do another episode about refi refinancing.

Taylor:
[1:12:13] Becca is in the middle of trying to buy her first home right now, and it’s been quite a journey. Let’s go there. Let’s talk about how are you feeling? What’s your experience been like the last couple years?

Becca:
[1:12:26] I have like a really, there’s a lot of differences. I’m considering an investment property um as my initial investment as a consideration. Um, because I, and the reason for that is that I cannot afford to purchase a home where I want to live right now. Um, because I’m a fairly low income earner and I actually just found out I’m legally part-time, I always thought I was full-time I’m actually legally a part-time.

Taylor:
[1:12:55] Are you serious, wow!

Becca:
[1:12:58] Um, because massage therapy is inherently part time, because like, no person can work one massage job and do like 40 hours of hands on hours a week or you die. Anyway, so I’m a single income earner, not a high income earner, I don’t have anyone who can co-sign with me. But I really want to own property and it’s not because I don’t want to rent anymore. I love renting from my friends and I love living in central Austin and I want to keep doing that because I’ll probably purchase outside of Austin just due to necessity, but I’m just ready to have a stake in the game. And I also had set this arbitrary goal of once I hit 100K of my net worth, then I would go after a house and I hit that a couple months ago.

Jewels:
[1:13:50] Oh damn girl!

Becca:
[1:13:50] So yeah. Uh yeah, my goal was for quarter one to hit that and I didn’t quite because I had to buy a new car, I ended up hitting that early quarter two I think. So that’s when I started like earnestly looking for a house for arbitrary reasons. I just don’t know what the right decision is for myself. I’ve like looked in Austin last year before Covid hit and I found some really viable opportunities and then I was furloughed because of Covid and then those opportunities weren’t viable anymore. So then like post Covid, it’s a totally different situation. Like, like we’ve mentioned earlier, housing costs increase really dramatically and I was making less money because of Covid, I couldn’t massage as many people during the week during, because of Covid protocols. So I had to wait until basically June of this year to where my earning capacity went back up to what it was pre-Covid. And so now I’m in the market again, which is really interesting and horrifying because, you know, regardless of how much we roast Warren Buffett, I’ll never not consider his advice of buy fear, sell greed. And the market that we’re in is definitively greed. It is explicitly greed. It’s nothing besides that. And the idea of purchasing a home right now, when there’s like all these ravenous people next to me who have much deeper pockets than I do, feels like both fruitless and patronizing at the same time, my budget is laughable compared to that. So now I’m kind of, I’m looking further outside of Austin and now I’m looking further outside of Austin like into San Antonio, into Arkansas, like far places where I can actually afford property. Anyways, what am I saying? It’s all very hopeless.

Maggie:
[1:15:55] So you’re already feeling a bit stressed about it. It’s a stressful time.

Becca:
[1:15:59] Well it’s a stressful time but it’s not just that, it’s like I have the resources but I just, they aren’t compatible with where I live and where I want to live. Like I could move to Arkansas, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going to I want to live in the city but I can’t afford the city to purchase but I can’t afford to rent in the city for now. So I don’t know, I don’t really know what my route forward is.

Taylor:
[1:16:24] Also, there’s a lot of people out there right now trying to buy houses and it’s fucking rough. Like you’re not the only one.

Maggie:
[1:16:29] Well, I’m not trying to disillusion you, I didn’t think it was a great time, so.

Taylor:
[1:16:35] Yeah. It sucks. It sucks. It’s hard, but like…

Jewels:
[1:16:40] Not everyone has to buy a house. But it is something that if you’re in the market for, I don’t think there’s any rush. I think the only rush is that if you’re going to have to be patient and wait for something that is maybe a little atypical or that certain thing where it’s like I can grab this before other people get it. You just want to be in the market sooner rather than later because you don’t know when that’s going to pop up if it’s going to be now or if it’s going to be 18 months from now.

Taylor:
[1:16:57] And you’re in the position you’re ready to go so.

Becca:
[1:17:08] Exactly, so I feel like, I know I’m sounding very doomsday, it’s just because I’ve been like very in it right now, like the last couple days have been very like, immersed um, but really, like, I’m in a great position, like, hey, I’ve got an amazing place I’m living in now, an amazing place I’m moving into, my renting situation’s amazing. Um and like I am, I’m in charge of my financial situation and I have a lot of control over it and I have a lot of resources saved, so if I buy a really shitty house, I’ll be able to do something with it to make it really beautiful and something that I want to own. And I’m in no rush, like that, that is the big thing, it’s, it’s like this, it’s it’s just the implied rush of like will housing exponentially go up for a really long time, or is there going to be more of a shift? And I don’t know, but really overall, I’m feeling really comfortable, like not the act of purchasing a home, I’m very deeply uncomfortable with that, but like, my personal situation, I’m feeling really good and I don’t feel rushed, like Zach doesn’t make me feel rushed and, um my partner certainly doesn’t, so really, it’s really not a bad situation and like I’ve kind of fallen in love with some situations, I really, well, I’ll just tell you and I don’t know if this is relevant, but like, so I can’t, I know I won’t be able afford central Austin probably for the foreseeable future, but I really am in love with buying a home and the downtown area of the surrounding community. So that whatever home I do purchase is walkable to the things in its area, it won’t be Austin proper, but like if it’s on a meta current metro line or a future metro line and it’s walkable to the downtown, that’s what I want. I really want to walkable home because that’s where I’d like to live eventually, is somewhere walkable.

Loren:
[1:18:59] Are there any particular cities that call out to you?

Becca:
[1:19:02] I like kind of fell in love with downtown Round Rock. I don’t know if any of you all have gone to downtown Round Rock. Not Round Rock but downtown Round Rock. It is precious. It’s like if you ever went to college station like North Gate, which is just a string of cowboy bars, it’s really similar to that. It’s like a couple of city blocks with just tons of bars and art galleries and tattoo studios and like old diners and it’s just all very like within a couple blocks, it’s very walkable and there’s this very like, residential area around it and I just like loved it. So I really love the idea of buying a home walking distance from downtown Round Rock. So I’ve been looking a lot at Round Rock and like looking for homes that are within a 20 minute walking radius of the downtown library and that’s all, not all in my price range, but some of them are. So things like that, but my realtor, who’s a lot smarter than I am when it comes to real estate, really wants me to buy a duplex that’s twice my budget, which gives me exclusively anxiety.

Taylor:
[1:20:13] I don’t blame you though. I also kind of in love with the idea of like all of our friends buying like, cute like little like Victorian or like 50s houses and like the dream I had where me and Maggie bought a house together and fixed it up but it ended up being haunted. I told you about that right? Yeah like I just have…

Jewels:
[1:20:30] Y’all dream about each other a lot.

Maggie:
[1:20:34] And I’m good with it.

Taylor:
[1:20:38] Me too. Um yeah I just, I do, like don’t, I am 100% with you on that. Like I love this idea of like buying a little house in like a small little like walkable town or it’s like a cute little like you know community and like lots of little shops and like the coffee shops and stuff. But the thing is that all of us would have to do it so that all my friends were there too anyway.

Becca:
[1:20:59] Anyways. I don’t know what I was saying but yeah. So it’s a living in a high cost of living city and attempting to purchase is a strange situation for me right now.

Taylor:
[1:21:00] But you are building your finances too. Like your net worth is going up every year now that you’re investing and like looking at different avenues for income and building your wealth. So as prices go up hopefully like your ability to purchase at a higher rate won’t, it won’t seem as bad because you’ll also have a lot more money is the goal. Hopefully.

Becca:
[1:21:29] Yeah. It’s like a perplexing situation because I didn’t know this until I started trying to buy a home. Is that how much money you have? Doesn’t matter. It’s only how much money you earn. And as someone who has always been a low income earner but like a really good saver, I really thought I was setting myself up for success, but I wasn’t.

Jewels:
[1:21:55] Even if you’re a high income earner but not W-2, they don’t care. They’re like, okay well we’ll count that as like, for W-2, for some reason banks still believe in job security, even though everything the last 10 to 15 years has shown otherwise. They still believe in job security so they will give you future credit for the income. They think you’re going to make the next year and they will base how much house you can buy off of that. But if you’re self employed it doesn’t matter how much you’ve earned every month for the last year. They think you’re going to earn nothing next month, so they’re not going to approve you for as much. Even though like you have proven that you can sock away a ton of cash in your account. Like the amount of cash you’re approaching home buying with is way more than most of us.

Taylor:
[1:22:44] I literally live paycheck to paycheck and they gave me a fucking house.

Jewels:
[1:22:45] They did make you get a co signer.

Taylor:
[1:22:54] But like that is the only reason I got the house. But yeah, like I have like since such a worst financial situation, the whole process is fucking dumb.

Becca:
[1:23:05] It’s very bizarre and feels very arbitrary. I remember I had a call with our, with Zach’s like home loan person and I was like, okay, this is how much I make, but hear me out, this is how much money I have. And she’s like, that really doesn’t matter, I can’t emphasize enough. Unless you will buy this house cash that does nothing for me and nothing for you, goddamn it!

Jewels:
[1:23:30] And she’s saying that as your advocate yeah, she’s like I just can’t sell that to a bank, there’s no way.

Loren:
[1:23:38] It really did feel like we were doing gymnastics, you know, it was like, give me this specific piece of paper that says this and I was like, what? You know, it was just, they were constantly, and then you think you were done handing in the papers and then they’d be like, oh you need more papers. It was just, I understood what they were doing, but on our end they weren’t being super open about it. So it was just kind of like, let’s get what they need, but then there, it was just a very surprising time.

Jewels:
[1:24:11] Right, like they’re trying to advocate for you and they know what the underwriters are looking for and they’re trying to package you up really well. And everything about this last year was really weird. So like you, and they’re on a timeline. Yeah, I need this yesterday.

Maggie:
[1:24:23] Well, and they’re on a timeline, so like I need this.

Loren:
[1:24:27] Yeah, it would be, well, so we would have these moments where they would, we would turn in everything that they wanted. We wouldn’t hear for them for a couple of weeks and then I would be like, are you guys good? You need annything else? They say no, we’re good. And then the next day we’d get we need these five things for you by the end of the day or something crazy and I would lose my mind, I’d be like, oh my god, you know?

Jewels:
[1:24:53] This is not possible.

Loren:
[1:24:54] Yeah, exactly. But I understood they were on our side, but at the same time, it did feel, it was like they’re on our team, but also I’m terrified, you know of being able to get the things that I need.

Maggie:
[1:25:07] Yeah, it’s a very stressful time.

Taylor:
[1:25:09] How does it feel to be our first official guest?

Loren:
[1:25:14] It feels amazing. It feels good to kind of just talk it out and hear what other people went through.

Becca:
[1:25:15] It’s just like a financial therapy session.

Loren:
[1:25:21] We all had such a unique and different situations.

Jewels:
[1:25:29] Okay, so we can definitely do a part two, that’s about the real nitty gritty of real estate and first time home buying. But I do think something that came up a lot in our discussion tonight was sort of who your team is and how to mitigate some of the risks and stress that we’ve all put ourselves through. Okay, so I think the two most important team members you can put together are your realtor, and your mortgage broker, because the ones going to really help you assess the different investments you’re looking at, and the other person is responsible for making you look good enough that you can get the investment you want when you find it. And a lot of people think you don’t shop for mortgages until you have a house that you want to buy. And that’s the point where you find the person who’s going to do your mortgage, don’t do that to yourself, find your mortgage broker, interview a few of them or find your realtor. Often these people work together. So they have, like if you find one of those that you trust, ask them for a referral for the other one, because these are really like, it’s a whole team, they have to do a lot of work behind the scenes together. So you want them to be the type of people who can call each other, you know. But 6-12 months before you’re even planning to start buying a house, go meet with your mortgage broker and let them look at your finances because they can tell you don’t worry about paying off this credit card. This doesn’t look so bad. Focus on this thing over here, then kind of help optimize like if you can’t clear all of your debt, but you can clear 10,000 of it, they’ll tell you where to clear it because you probably have options. You have different levers you can pull and they know it looks good to the banks and it’s usually very counterintuitive to what you and I would think makes you look good.

Taylor:
[1:27:10] And you don’t pay them until you buy a home, right? So it’s free for you baby until you get the, until they deliver, so that’s a pretty good deal.

Jewels:
[1:27:13] Correct. Yeah. And if you go and talk to them and they don’t have any recommendations on how to optimize your finances or your work situation to look good, they’re probably not that great at their job. They’re probably like a pretty early mortgage broker who works for a bank. And they’re used to dealing with W-2 employees and they just, they file paperwork. This is like a lot of realtors are that way. You know, they’re not there to help you assess the investment. They’re just there to help you file the paperwork when you find the one you want. So make sure you actually put together a team of people who have your best interests and can think creatively and pull it all together for you because it’s going to make a big difference. And then the other thing is increase your emergency fund, start talking about a little extra cash so that when something breaks after you move in or if you need extra cash in the process you have it and you don’t have to be as stressed out. And I say that from personal experience having lived so close to the edge for so long, I want lots of cash in the bank before we buy our next property.

Maggie:
[1:28:19] Same lesson learned from Maggie. Yeah more money in the bank can never hurt, but it also is hard to get that, but.

Taylor:
[1:28:25] In this situation cash is not trash.

Jewels:
[1:28:28] Keep it in cash, buy that house and then invest that money somewhere else. Well this was so much fun. Thank you so much.

Taylor:
[1:28:40] Thank you Loren. You’ve been amazing. Our best, our favorite guest.

Becca:
[1:28:48] Thanks for listening, y’all Thanks for listening to our stories about buying a home or being in the process of buying a home. Um, we’re really happy to discuss them and we hope you gained some information from this. This is a part of at least a two part series. Uh, if you have any questions, we really, really want to hear it to make sure that we’re addressing everything that people might be thinking about when it comes to purchasing a home. Um, so please comment, like, subscribe on wherever it is that you stream this, go to our website, vaginance.com. Go to our Instagram @vaginancepodcast. We really want to hear from you.

Maggie:
[1:29:30] Loren, any place that we can find you that you would like to mention?

Loren:
[1:29:34] Sure, you can go to my instagram, which is @grushcrush, or I’m @lorengrush

Jewels:
[1:29:45] What’s your website address?

Taylor:
[1:29:47] Coolest space journalist website.

Loren:
[1:29:48] lorengrush.com

Becca:
[1:29:47] So join us. Right, join us.

Maggie:
[1:29:54] Yes, join us. One of us.