Girl, Buy That House! By Jennifer Myers

I didn’t expect it to, but buying a home changed the trajectory of my life in ways I never could have imagined.  

I was 21 years old when someone gifted me the book, Rich Dad Poor Dad.  I had grown up with parents who worked for the government–just like the “Poor Dad” in that book.  We were by no means poor, but we certainly never talked about the things this “Rich Dad” was talking about.  

I had just graduated college with a finance degree and yet I hadn’t learned the financial concepts this book made sound almost too good to be true.  

Reading that book made me realize something even a finance degree hadn’t…

I didn’t need to be rich to buy real estate…I needed to buy real estate to become rich.    

So Many Obstacles In The Way

I couldn’t unsee what a powerful wealth building tool real estate was, and how attainable–according to this book–buying a home could be, even for someone like me who didn’t have much money. 

I knew my first step was to buy my first home.  The only problem?  I had just graduated college, had no money saved and was making $27,000 per year.  (According to an online inflation calculator, that’s like making $45,782.99 in 2024).  

Interest rates were around 6% and every home I saw in the neighborhoods I wanted to live in cost way more than I could afford.  

Despite the very real obstacles in my way, my nearly debilitating fear of making a huge mistake, and it taking longer than I’d hoped, I kept marching forward and bought my first home.  

Mistakes:  Golden Tickets In Disguise 

As I had feared–I made a huge mistake.  

I didn’t find out until after buying my home that I could have received a $50,000 downpayment assistance grant.  

I would have qualified for this grant because I was buying my first home, my income was lower than the median average for the area, and because of where my home was located (aka not in the hottest part of town–I couldn’t afford to be there!).  

Now that I had already bought my first home, I would never be eligible to receive these funds again.  

Why hadn’t I known this assistance program existed before I bought my first home?  Why had no one told me before it was too late?  $50,000 was almost double what I was making in a year.   If only I had known about this sooner, so many things would have been different.  

I was devastated, and that could have been the end of my real estate story.  

But I wanted to somehow use this new-found knowledge for good.  How could I make sure other people who qualified for these types of programs didn’t miss out on them like I had? 

I decided to become a real estate agent.  I wanted to help people who didn’t think they could afford a home understand that it likely was possible for them, and to learn from my mistake–they could use these programs to make it happen!

It was too late for me, but I could help make it happen for them.   

It took a few years (and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears–a story for another time) to get things off the ground, but eventually I had so many clients who wanted me to help them buy their first home, I had a waiting list of clients.  

I was selling a house or two per week, making more money than I ever thought possible while helping people make their first home more attainable and affordable. I was even able to open my own brokerage and buy the building where my brokerage was located.  

I was living a life that was truly beyond my wildest dreams and none of it would have happened if I had let my fears and the obstacles in my way stop me from buying my first home.  Out of one of my biggest fears coming true–making a huge mistake–came a million dollar per year real estate business.  

Doing The Impossible

Buying my first home didn’t just change the trajectory of my life, I started noticing how it was changing the trajectory of my clients’ lives too.  

Many of my clients were single women and once they became homeowners, a switch seemed to flip inside them. 

Over and over again, I’d watch from the sidelines as my clients transformed their lives in big ways shortly after taking the huge leap into homeownership.   

They negotiated promotions and pay raises.  They started their own businesses.  They bought bigger houses, vacation houses, and investment properties.  They traveled to places they always wanted to go.  They decided to have a baby–on their own!  They ran for city counsel–and won!  They started dating again after having sweared it off for years–some even meeting “the one” right down the hall.  

They experienced what it was like to accomplish something as scary, overwhelming and seemingly “impossible” as buying a home on their own and as a result, a door flung open inside their self-confidence.  They started to wonder what other “impossible” things they might be able to make happen in their lives–and then they went out and did them.   

Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway

What I know for sure from watching all this unfold over the last twenty years–both in my life and the lives of hundreds of my clients–is that when we do the one thing we fear most and we are willing to figure out how to do what feels impossible, life opens up for us in bigger ways than we could have ever imagined.  

For you, it might not be about buying a house (although if that is a big scary thing you have on your wish list and haven’t done yet–do it asap and use Jed as your agent).  

For you, “buying that house” might be a metaphor for whatever big, scary thing you know deep down if you did, everything would change for the better.   

Do it, even if all you see are obstacles in your way.  

Do it because no matter what happens next, your life will open up in ways you can’t possibly see from where you stand now.  Sure, you’ll make mistakes along the way, but those mistakes might end up being what enables your wildest dreams to come true and inspires others to do the same. 

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