A Soldier’s Journey with Home Ownership

My spouse has served this country for thirty years.  I served eight years and was released with a medical disability. We have two children and one suffers with severe environmental allergies. These allergies trigger her asthma. We are “zero-for-four” in our home purchases since we married, as each one has cost us thousands in home repairs that should have been picked up in home inspections. When we retire in five years or sooner, we will still have a considerable mortgage / debt because of the home purchases we made. It’s quite the gold watch. 

I’ll start off by saying buying our first home caused us more anxiety than planning our wedding, and that was no small task.  My hubby was posted to Petawawa, ON and I was in Lahr, Germany, and we were married in my hometown in southern Ontario. The wedding was beautiful. The day we bought our first house had us both feeling sick; “What had we done?”

A soldier and his family has one week, to find a house when they move to a new location. They are required to sell their home in their old location before they can go on a trip to look for their next residence. So they are effectively homeless. We are at the mercy of the professionals we hire to help us make the best decision possible.  Our first home was 100 years old, detached, and the basement allowed a renovation to create additional living space. Our agent was completely dishonest with us and the home inspector the agent recommended was poorly qualified.  Every “expert” has their own specialty and inspection focuses on these areas, or not. Our first home inspector was a retired window guy and his home inspection was all about the windows. The home inspection report is both a blessing and a curse, as it tells you a lot about your house and turns a soldier’s family into “house –flippers” whether they want to be or not. When we have to sell, move to our new posting, those repairs have to be done or face losing money.

The government hired a contractor to aid the soldiers and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) with their moves around the country. As a spouse, it greatly stresses me in dealing with the organization. The policy seems to be, “don’t ask, don’t tell”. If we don’t know what we are able to do, they save money. With every house we have learned more each time.  When we had to sell our first house the Department of National Defense (DND) contractor gave us a nice bag with two books full of numbers and jargon that makes little or no sense.  Now they have this great website that you can sit in front of for hours trying to make sense of everything. So what does a young family do? They put themselves in the hands of “professionals” whose mandate is to save DND money. For instance, we had no idea I could walk away from any house we put an offer on, based on the home inspection. Our first house took forever to sell and we ended up on “Imposed Restriction” (IR) and came close to divorcing due to the stress created by the living situation. My spouse went to the new location without his wife and child, with the house still on the market and everything that goes with it.  Knowing what we know now we never would have bought our first house. We had no idea, till we got burned that we could hire a WETT inspector prior to purchase. Not having that information cost us thousands with one of our houses. A previous owner had literally shoved a stove pipe down the chimney instead of a proper stainless steel liner.  When and where we are transferred also hampers our housing efforts.  There are times when we had hundreds of homes to choose from or six and the choices weren’t great. But remember, were are homeless and we have one week to buy a house. Shopping for a home with each posting we go to has become a hateful experience.

Every professional is in the others’ pocket. The Mortgage broker gets paid our home upkeep allowance to reduce our mortgage interest rate, a “Mortgage interest buy-down”. This leaves us with still having to pay the costs to move in, such as furnace cleaning, repairs from the movers, curtains, etc. So how is a mortgage interest buy down a savings to us money? The house we presently own cost us close to $10000 within six month of purchase and the house was only ten years old. Real Estate agents pay each other percentages for recommendations and must be willing to accept the payment requirements required by the DND contractor. Their place on the list is not based on recommendations from home sellers or buyers. They can be dishonest and unprofessional as long as they accept the payment plan. The same is true for Lawyers, Home Inspectors, WETT Inspectors, etc. Because of the timing restraints we generally let our real estate recommend these professionals to us. Is there an exchange of funds between these “professionals”, we are unaware. They are definitely paid for their services to us, our experience with Lawyers on the DND contractor’s list have been uneventful so far. Our experience with Inspectors has not been wonderful; their place on the list and being ability to be recommended to a “transient family” should be based on their abilities / experience and recommendations from others, and not how they are paid. We have been burned by both Inspectors failing to catch problems with the house and by agents not being honest.

The home we presently own was “custom built with a four season sunroom”. Well we have put over $20000 in repairs into this house already, it is freezing cold in the winter, and the sun room is three seasons at best.  What do we do? The windows are bad.  We had the builder in to look and the manufacturer and they won’t / can’t help us. We have to provide an invoice to get the windows repaired by the manufacturer and the builder no longer has the invoice. We have replaced ten thermal-panes in this home already. Each spring means we will need to replace a couple more. My supplier has told me there is talk of a law suit against the thermal-pane manufacturer.  It is getting to the point where it would have been cheaper to completely replace some of the windows than continue to repair rotten thermal -panes. We may also have to replace the Air conditioning unit at a cost of $13000 as the coils are showing corrosion. We desperately need to add an air cleaner to warmer air return as this 15 year old house is starting to make my daughter and I sick. Veterans Affairs is looking at putting me on permanent disability, we are facing huge repair costs on a home we may not get to keep, and we are going to lose money on the sale of this house. The Army may have a transfer or two still in store for us before we retire.