Reporter's realty check

I was supposed to know the ins and outs of buying a home, but then I had to shop for one in Boston

Reporter Binyamin Appelbaum looked over the new home in Jamaica Plain he and his girlfriend bought. (Lisa Poole Photo for The Boston Globe)

My girlfriend and I had one weekend to find a home in Boston.

We found the right place on Sunday afternoon: The third floor of a painted Victorian in Jamaica Plain. It had 1,200 square feet of wood floors, sun-drenched rooms, and variously slanted ceilings. It felt like home.

We made an offer. The sellers accepted. "Congratulations!" both real estate agents said.

Then the sellers said they couldn't return a signed contract that night. Would the morning be all right? Then the morning came and the sellers said they had another offer. A higher price. They hadn't signed our contract yet. They had only given us their word. It turned out that wasn't enough.

Welcome to Boston. We were back on the market.

I was hired by the Globe in August to write about real estate. I was raised in Newton, but I've worked in the South since graduating college, most recently in Charlotte, N.C. I wrote about real estate in Charlotte. I owned a home in Charlotte. I mention these details to make a point. As my girlfriend said one night, "You're the real estate reporter. You're supposed to know this stuff."

And yet, during what became our one-month search for housing, we were stumped repeatedly. Sometimes we made the wrong choices. Sometimes, despite our best efforts and careful preparations, members of the industry profited at our expense. Probably more often than we realized.

In the end, we found a place we love. We paid what we consider a fair price. We're having a party as soon as I unpack the last of my boxes. But that's just the happy ending.

First mistake: Trying to see too much

We wanted a condo in an old house, in an old neighborhood, near a subway station and a park where a dog could romp. We were ready to spend $400,000.

We landed at Logan Airport in September feeling a fair amount of pressure. The Globe pays for a three-day house-hunting trip, and 30 days of temporary housing. We didn't want to rent. We didn't want to move twice. But if we couldn't find a place in those three days, we probably couldn't close before we lost our temporary housing.

In the new cities of the South, people live in large developments segmented by price. Some subdivisions stretch for miles, with signs at regular intervals along the highway: Homes from $100,000 . . . Homes from $150,000 . . . Homes from $200,000 . . . In some parts of Charlotte, people say where they live by giving the number of the nearest highway exit, as if that were the most distinctive thing about their subdivision.

Boston by contrast is diverse and fine-grained. Two adjacent streets - two blocks on the same street - can feel like completely different places. Figuring out which block you'd like better is a daunting challenge.

During our first two days in Boston, we visited two dozen condos in Dorchester, South Boston, Arlington, Cambridge, Somerville, and Jamaica Plain. In my memory, they have melted into a single condo with a bowfront and a back deck and walls painted all the colors of Joseph's Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. With easy on-street parking.

We should have focused first on deciding where we wanted to live. We should have spent the first day just visiting neighborhoods. We could have eliminated the places in Arlington, where everyone has babies, and South Boston, where everyone works in the Financial District, and Dorchester, where shopping requires a car.

It was hard enough to find the right place in the neighborhoods we did like. The best condos we saw during those first two days all had fatal flaws: Stairs too steep for the dog; a bedroom too small for a bed; a long walk to the T; the absence of sunlight.

But on the third day, the first place we saw seemed just right.

We decided to offer full price. The average price of Boston homes was trending downward. But we couldn't see any evidence of a downturn in Jamaica Plain. We had watched several desirable places snapped up as soon as they were listed. The price of this condo seemed fair to us, and comfortably in our price range. Finally, we were told that other people were also "very interested."

Buying a home can feel like a romance - It's not

After the owners verbally accepted our offer, I could feel my shoulders relaxing. I even felt some affection for the sellers. When their real estate agent called to ask for more time to fax the signed contract, we didn't blink. It felt like an easy thing to do for the nice people who had agreed to sell us their home.

And so we learned a bitter lesson the next morning, when they called to say they were selling the home to someone else: Real estate is a business. Sellers just want money, as much as possible. We should have been polite but firm when they asked for more time: Return the contract, or consider our offer withdrawn.

Instead the sellers reneged. We don't know if they misled us intentionally when they asked for more time. Maybe the better offer came as a surprise. I do know that selling real estate seems to strain the honesty of many participants. It's the national poker game: Everyone bluffing, hoping to win a few extra dollars. One of my favorite examples is the document Massachusetts sellers sign ritually swearing they're not sure if the walls are painted with lead.

We've since heard from friends several similar stories about deals done verbally, and then undone.

Our agent complained to the sellers' agent's firm, and was told by the manager that she had represented her clients effectively. She had succeeded in getting them a higher price.

Lesson learned: Get it in writing

We couldn't resume our search until we moved to Boston several weeks later. We arrived at our temporary housing late on a Thursday night, and met our real estate agent early Friday morning.

Now we focused on the neighborhoods we liked best. We developed a list of desirable features. My girlfriend wanted a gas stove, a study, and plenty of sunlight. I wanted a porch, a fireplace and a dark bedroom.

We found the right place Friday afternoon: 1,600 square feet in an old house in Jamaica Plain. It had a gas stove, a study, and plenty of sunlight. It did not have a porch, or a fireplace, or a dark bedroom. It felt like home.

This time we felt hardened. We offered less than the full price. We also asked to close quickly, so we could move directly from our temporary housing. And we told them not to bother calling if they accepted our offer. We just wanted to see a signed contract.

After two days of haggling, we had an agreement. But not a contract. The sellers said they couldn't send it until morning. We settled for an e-mail affirming their intentions, and then we waited restlessly.

The contract arrived in the morning. The place was ours.

It was time to get a mortgage.

I felt confident about this part of the process. People who end up in bad loans generally don't understand the terms. They make the mistake of trusting the person who arranges the loan. Sometimes they read the documents, raise a concern, and then accept the broker's assurance that things will be fine.

That wasn't going to happen to me. I read everything. I told the mortgage broker we would pay his fee directly, to make sure the interest rate was as low as possible. We agreed to cap the total closing costs at $3,000.

The professionals always have the advantage

Naturally, when I received a copy of the settlement statement the day before closing, the total closing costs exceeded $3,000. The small print showed an unexpected fee of $835 for something called owner's title insurance.

Title insurance is a curious thing. Before a home is sold, a lawyer checks to make sure no one besides the current owner has a claim to the property - no boundary disputes, no unpaid contractors, no unresolved battles about which grandson gets to keep the home. Then the mortgage company charges you several hundred dollars for an insurance policy in case the lawyer made a mistake.

That's called lender's title insurance. It protects the lender's investment. I had heard of that.

As I would learn during the following frantic hour, owner's title insurance is a second policy that covers you in case the lawyer made a mistake and the lender's insurance company doesn't care. In other words, it's a third safety net.

When we asked our lawyer why we should buy it, he said, "I always recommend that my clients pay for title insurance, but it's probably just as well to spend the money on a new refrigerator."

The mortgage company that was arranging our loan sweetly informed us that it was an optional fee, and therefore it didn't need to fit under the $3,000 cap.

Lawyers can profit by convincing customers to accept title insurance. The lawyer handling our closing directed our attention to a document in the stack of papers awaiting our signature. It said that we had agreed to pay for the policy.

We didn't sign that document.

We did sign a lot of other documents, after which the seller's agent handed us a large number of keys.

The condo already had a nice refrigerator, so we spent some of the $835 on a celebratory lunch.

Binyamin Appelbaum can be reached at bappelbaum@globe.com.