First Home.
One Last-Minute Scare.
Zero Regrets.

A note from Eric

Leif and Riley had already been through this once before they found me. They were working with another agent, found a place they were excited about, and then watched it slip away when the negotiations after inspection didn’t go in their direction. It wasn’t a great experience.

When they came to me, they were ready, but cautious. We looked at a few homes last fall, hit pause for a stretch, and picked back up in February. They found the right house quickly: a four-level split in West Fargo with a great backyard and plenty of room to grow into.

And then, five days before closing, a curveball came out of nowhere. Most buyers would have fallen apart. Leif and Riley stayed the course. Here’s how they went from apartment renters to first-time homeowners.

Done Waiting to Own

There was no lightning bolt moment.

After years of renting, Leif and Riley had been talking about buying but kept finding reasons to wait. Timing. Finances. Life getting in the way. There’s always something to lean on when you’re not quite ready to commit. But they knew that if they kept waiting for the perfect moment, it probably wasn’t coming.

“I don’t think there was an exact right time,” Leif says. “It was just kind of one of those things that naturally worked out. If we’d waited for the exact right time, we probably never would have gotten there.”

So they decided to stop waiting.

The First Attempt

Before finding Eric, they decided to just see what was out there and ended up finding a house they liked. But the negotiations after inspection didn’t land in their favor. The house slipped away. It stung. "It taught us quickly that who you work with makes a real difference," says Riley.

When they started working with me, they were hopeful. But they'd also been here before, so they remained cautiously optimistic until keys were in hand.

The House That Checked the Boxes

They looked at homes through the fall, took a break for a few months, and picked back up in February.

"When we found the four-level split in West Fargo, it checked a lot of boxes: space, a good backyard, an attached garage, three bedrooms. But more than anything, it had room to become something."

“I could envision us hosting,” Riley says. “Having friends over, family coming through. I could see it being that kind of space.”

Leif had her eye on the backyard, specifically, what it would mean for their dog. After years in an apartment, five flights of stairs, and a downstairs neighbor who’d rattle the furniture with bass at two in the morning, the idea of just opening a back door felt like freedom.

“That’s honestly the thing I was most excited about,” Leif says.

The Obstacle Nobody Saw Coming

Five days before closing, the sellers called.

They had a $10,000 debt they said they hadn’t known about. They couldn’t pay it off before closing. And they asked Leif and Riley — the buyers — to help cover part of someone else’s personal debt so that the deal could go through.

“There were definitely moments when I thought it might not work out,” Leif admits.

"We went through the day not knowing whether we’d wake up to a house the next morning. Eric and his team were on the phone negotiating until 9 o’clock the night before closing. We weren’t asked to pay a cent. The sellers found a way to resolve it."

In the end, they closed. On time. Without paying a dime toward someone else’s problem.

First Home. No Going Back.

The things that seemed small turned out to be the biggest wins for Leif and Riley.

No more planning around an elevator or five flights of stairs. Being able to open the back door and let the dog out on a whim. Having a space to actually have people over and want to be there.

“Just the ability to do what we want, when we want,” Leif says.

For anyone standing where we were a year ago, Leif and Riley's advice was simple: get pre-approved early, and ask about closing costs well before the 30-day mark. The numbers are there, and it’s worth knowing them upfront. And when it comes to looking at houses, go to as many as you can before you even know what you want.

And above all else?

“Be patient. Be flexible,” Leif says. “That benefits everybody.”