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This is a guest post by my mother, Rumni Banerjee, who is trying to buy a house during the pandemic to come and live closer to me in Dayton, Ohio. She is doggedly pursuing this goal and I asked her to write about it to share with you how it is done during a pandemic.
Rumni writes
It all started with my daughter getting sick with COVID-like symptoms.
Not that I was very happy with the fact that she lives all alone in Dayton where none of our family members live. But it didn’t come to my mind that we will move there.
So I started looking for a temporary place to stay in Dayton during this #pandemic which would be near my daughter’s home.
Initially, I wanted to:
- Visit her with cooked food delivered at the deck and see her from outside.
- Chat with her for some time or just sit there for a while and head back to the hotel or to an Extended stay.
- We don’t want to get infected from her.
But the danger of getting infection ourselves (my husband and me) from the hotel reception, corridors or elevators were there.
Renting a place came to my mind.
I searched for short term accommodation with rental management companies.
Finding a safe entrance to an apartment was hard.
Most of them have common corridors where social distancing may not be possible. Next, I tried to find rental townhomes which may have separate entry doors. There were some available from the middle of June and some from the middle of July which are one or two months later.
That too they don’t have a washer and dryer inside the unit and some don’t even have a dishwasher. We started thinking of hiring the appliances. Then we found out we have to apply for electricity in our names if we rent a place. Also, we have to pay for the internet, water, and trash in the case of townhomes.
We have experience in buying homes.
But in this pandemic with social distancing, meeting with an agent, showing of houses, and lastly but most importantly financing was difficult.
But if there is a will, there is a way.
We started looking for houses on the internet.
All these while my inbox started filling with emails from different rental companies. Since I have enquired in a number of places around my daughter’s home they started replying to me. So I was full-time on the internet searching for homes and checking emails at the same time.
Looking for houses was not the same as rental homes.
Here the listings in different real estate sites show houses are available but they are not. This is Spring and the range of houses we are looking for is selling very fast in Dayton.
Luckily I got a contact with a very nice Agent from one of the sites. His name is John Cline. It’s like at the right time in the right place.
The surprise waiting for us was that the houses we selected after days of work all went under contract! We were too late!
Then our Agent sent us some more links and we rushed to find which one is good for us. In the race of buying houses, we had to select a house in one day, did virtual showing with Google Duo, and placed an offer all within 24 hours.
He showed us each of the corners and details of the house including good points and weak points with the help of his phone camera. He is a nice man and valued all requests.
If you are trying to buy a house during the pandemic, it will be different but know that there is still competition. The time to act is yesterday.
Let us know your questions below.
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