We’re deep into the process of buying our first home, an endeavor complicated by the fact that we’re doing the transactions from out of state. We had given ourselves five days to look at properties and make a decision—foolhardy, perhaps, but we reasoned that we’d have to find a place to live anyway, so why not get a pre-approval and go take a look at what’s available. But this post isn’t about the incredibly stressful process of buying the most expensive thing in our entire lives (well, yes it is), but (also) about all the new lingo we had to pick up along the way.

As if the process weren’t scary enough, buying real estate comes with a whole dictionary’s worth of new words and phrases that describe a dizzying array of choices, steps, relationships, documents, and booby traps. Some of the terms—single family homes, condos, mortgages—you absorb just by virtue of being a conscious human being, even if how these things are technically defined or how they work is often a bit fuzzy. But once you actually launch into the process, once you become a “serious buyer,” the terms multiply, and learning how to speak the lingo of the real estate market becomes an essential part of acculturating into homeownership—that state of indebtedness to the American Dream.

A friend lent me her copy of Home Buying for Dummies, and looking through it, you realize why such books were invented. You don’t need a whole book to get general advice about being an informed consumer—do your research, shop around, ask a lot of questions, find people you can trust. You buy the book so that you can understand what the hell those people are talking about—and by those people, I don’t just mean the real estate agents, but the mortgage lenders, the inspectors, the appraisers, the attorneys, the escrow officers, the credit bureaus, etc.—everyone who has their hand in the pie that is the transaction between “buyer” and “seller” (ideally, both “motivated”). Before even looking at “properties,” it’s useful to know the difference between “pre-qualification” and “pre-approval,” and why the latter is preferable to the former. To boost our know-how in a short amount of time, I signed my husband and me up for a homebuying seminar offered by the university in conjunction with the large lending company that gives special rates, and learned that there are as many different kinds of loans and financing structures as there are buyers: if you don’t have those magic numbers—a healthy “FICO score” (credit report number) and “20% down” (20% of the purchase price in cash as a down payment) and for some reason don’t want or can’t afford the “30-year fixed” (fixed rate mortgage paid over 30 years)--there are ARMs (adjustable-rate mortgages) and hybrid loans and balloon loans and bridge loans and 80/20 financing to help you realize your dream. Of course, such dreams are built on more complicated, less stable foundations—“negative amortization” anyone? It’s as bad as it sounds. And when I hear “sub-prime lending,” I can’t help but think of cuts of beef, where it’s not clear whether the borrower or the lower quality “products” available to them is the meat on sale. Luckily, we don't have to resort to that kind of financial slaughter, but that doesn't mean we're not bleeding a little.

The financial side of things is perhaps the most stressful and emotional—it raises anxieties not just about the present, but about all the “what if’s” of the unknowable future. “How much house can we afford?” is also a question about the future of one’s working life, the imagined success or failure of one’s career, one’s tolerance for risk, one’s confidence in such abstractions as markets, and rates, and fickle human desires. But then there are all the legal terms and paperwork that make everything binding and metes out ultimate responsibilities. Such things as “title searches” and “title insurance” and decisions about how to “hold” the title (“joint tenancy,” “community property,” “tenants-in-common”) guard against the pitfalls and contingencies of actual ownership. And then there are the many many fees associated with getting all the legal “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed, which add to the “closing costs,” a mysterious number that, when the time comes, will seem too much no matter what.

It’s an overwhelming process. I feel like we did just enough research to not get completely screwed over, but I also feel like there are so many areas that are still murky, that perhaps we weren’t aggressive enough in doing this or that. The whole system seems designed to make suckers of buyers, where protecting your interests means having to depend on professionals who may or may not be in the business of protecting your interests above their own. Learning all the technical jargon and euphemistic terminology can’t help you master the process; in the end, the system operates on the currency of trust, even as it is built on the premise of distrust (have everything written down, signed, copied, insured, inspected, appraised, recorded, notarized, held in escrow). And in the trust market, you have to rely on signs other than numbers and percentages. It pays to hone your instincts, to learn how to pay attention to your gut. Unfortunately, there isn’t yet a book for that.