About Home Ownership
I want to celebrate today. Fifteen months ago, I became a homeowner in San Francisco. It took a while to get comfortable with what I have achieved. It took a whole lot longer to write about it.
You see, I didn’t grow up with the vision that I could become a homeowner someday: especially as an Indian woman. Instead, I grew up like many girls in South Asia do– with the notion that one day you will marry a boy and he or his family will have a house that you will become part of.
I still remember this conversation from 2017 with my mom. We were at the breakfast table at my rental studio apartment in San Francisco.
“So what do you think of this biodata (aka profile) of the boy which came recently?”
“Why do you think it is a good match, Mom?”
“He’s a good match because he has a job in San Jose, he owns a house, he is from our community and he’s also a teetotaler”.
While there was nothing wrong with that guy nor this line of reasoning for finding a husband, the 27 year-old me wondered how did this boy who graduated around the same time as me and had a similar amount of time working in the US, come to afford a house in the US? I asked my mom about it. (Along with other questions about consuming alcohol and marrying out of our culture group.) We later found out that that boy had received help from his uncle to put down a downpayment.
Around the same time, good things happened to me at the workplace. I got a job at Playstudios, where I became friends with many working women from different age groups and cultures. I saw a different way of living. I discovered that it is possible to travel, live, celebrate and be happy as a single woman.
Over the next few years, I continued to look for matches. Many Indian boys whom I talked to, had the expectation that I would uproot from San Francisco, leave my job and settle in the city they lived in. I am not saying that it is not an option. What bothers me is that it was usually not brought up as an option but as an obvious expectation.
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At the start of 2020, I hit a low point in my mental health and decided to see a therapist. One important thing I learnt from therapy is that not having a “partner” does not mean I could only achieve less, do less, or be less happy in my life. Partnership can work in different ways, can be about companionship and the rest of the things can be accomplished as an individual.
— — —
So finally my conversations with my parents changed to- “I want to buy a house as an investment”. Whether and when I find a partner is not related to that.
I remember doing the math over and over when I started thinking about it. After browsing real estate websites for 2 years and going to open houses for over 7 months, I closed on a house.
From childhood, I had learned how to save but didn’t learn how to spend — even cautiously. So the big purchase put me in shock. The following months were rough and filled with anxiety. I had to learn to accept the uncertainty of how the next few decades would pan out with a loan. Additionally, the first few times I shared the news about buying a house, I got mixed reactions.
Those in the San Francisco Bay Area would understand the average cost of houses here is 200% higher than other cities in the US. To an outsider, it’ll seem like a crazy decision to purchase in SF. Though the people living here have normalized the cost. While I understood this fact at a surface level, it was different experiencing it. As I started sharing the news, folks mentioned how happy and proud they were with my success. And in addition some expressed, “that sounds crazy,” “it is expensive,” “it will not pan out to beneficial returns”.
Hearing such opinions made me more conscious of my decision and put me in a bigger fear. So after a while, I started telling people that I am moving to a rental property instead. A lie that I wasn’t happy about. But feeling smaller felt okay than telling people about what I had accomplished. How would I explain how I am able to afford a house in San Francisco as a single woman?
The answer to that last question is–it’s the same way any of us do anything. As humans, we have desires and sometimes we get tangled in conflicting advice and traditions. So we have to figure out what we can do in our individual circumstance, decide what we want to do and take action towards it–despite the discomfort and fear. My personal learning from conflicting advice was that making a decision would still be better than making no decision at all, even if you don’t know whether it will be a mistake. The former gives us a chance to grow.
I am telling you this story to celebrate achieving this milestone for myself, to support my unmarried family/friends as there’s more to life than finding a partner, to instill that we teach the youngsters about finances early on and to acknowledge emotions of anxiety, uncertainty and fear in making big decisions. “Financial investment” and “home purchase” are goals anyone can achieve. It should be a milestone celebrated by itself regardless of gender, age and marital status. Having the next generation of daughters and daughters-in laws be home owners first if they want to, would not diminish what sons and sons-in-law can do if they want to. It just means we will be more equal in society. And together we can reach other goals.
Finally, while I have become a homeowner, what I gained out of it is more than a house. In my confidence that I am capable, I have gained a good home :)
