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Pre-pandemic, our one-bedroom highrise apartment in downtown º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøwas far from perfect (no air conditioning, no ensuite laundry, no dishwasher), but the pros outweighed the cons — the rent was cheap and we could walk to work and anywhere else we pleased.

Then lockdowns hit º£½ÇÉçÇø¹ÙÍøin March 2020. It was as if the apartment walls, which were increasingly covered in bubbles likely from leaky pipes, were closing in on us.

We wanted out. But little did I know that trying to buy a house during the pandemic-induced real estate frenzy would make me feel like I was stuck in a Groundhog Day within a Groundhog Day, a Russian doll of Groundhog Days if you will.

Like many of our fellow downtown denizens, the Husband and I spent our days trying to avoid people while trying to find somewhere to live where avoiding people would be easier. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

We thought buying outside the core might take a few weeks. Tops. 

How hard could it be?

The advantage of not doing anything or going anywhere for months on end meant we were able to save money at a very fast clip. By late 2020, we were armed with a pre-approval for a mortgage in the low $700,000s and a sense of confidence verging on delusion.

The first house we saw in person in January 2021 was essentially a one-bedroom loft that backed onto Prospect Cemetery in what was historically an affordable area. After being yelled and sworn at for asking maskless people to mask up in our apartment building elevator, the idea of having the dead as neighbours seemed, frankly, ah-mazing.

Interest rates had sank to historic lows and competition started seeping in from every direction. We hesitated. The west-end detached home was tiny and the biweekly payments would be huge. It sold in under a week for more than we could afford.

Around this time, a development proposal notice went up in front of our building. I wasn’t worried, yet.

Casting a really wide net

The pandemic hit the market like a bomb and high prices mushroomed out in all directions.

We soon realized we might have to go further afield. Much further. 

Throughout 2021 and into 2022 we seriously searched both house and job leads in cheaper places, specifically P.E.I., Nova Scotia and Ottawa, while not-so-secretly hoping the red-hot market in Hogtown would cool as some experts were predicting. Alas, house prices just kept climbing across Canada and lining up two permanent jobs in a smaller market so we could qualify for and pay a mortgage just didn’t pan out.

We also looked just outside of the GTA — in Dundas, Cobourg, Hamilton and Port Hope — as I worried what would happen if/when remote work ended. I ran some back-of-the-napkin math and found living outside the city and commuting in (higher property taxes, GO/TTC/VIA transit passes and a possible second car) would really add up.

I couldn’t sleep from the stress when I had one of those ideas you have in the middle of the night that seem silly in the light of day — why not just move back to Ireland?

I scrolled through real estate ads in Dublin, where I was born and lived as a small child. It turns out my hometown has become one of the most expensive cities in Europe. Sigh. The search kept circling back to the Big Smoke.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince

By mid-2022 we had visited so many houses that they all blurred into one mildewy fixer-upper that ended up selling way above asking. Some, though, were unforgettable.

The Train House had, you guessed it, a GO train line and power lines to boot basically in the backyard.

The S—- House smelled like, well, human poop presumably from a DIY plumbing project gone very awry.

The Murder House seemed promising until the sellers’ realtor let us know there had been a murder and grow-op there and, oh, his client wanted at least $300,000 over the asking price.

We continued hunting.

Falling head over heels

While Bill Murray kept waking up to Sonny and Cher on the radio in “Groundhog Day,” I spent the bulk of the pandemic awaking to Redfin alerts on my smartphone. I spent so much time trying to find houses online my thumb muscles started to ache from all the swiping. After a while, my heart started to ache as well.

Then, in the fall of 2022 we found The One. The detached house had a finished basement, a powered garage and was a short walk to the Main Street subway station. When I walked in I just knew this house would be our home.

We had already gotten blown out of the water offering on a semi-detached with a wild apple-red kitchen, so we offered near our max budget.

We got outbid. The conditional offer fell through and our realtor contacted the sellers’ agent repeatedly but they wanted just slightly more than the bank would lend us. Interest rates were rising so it was a buyers market now, right? Ha. The sellers held out and eventually sold for substantially more than the list price.

I was crushed.

Getting back in the saddle

As 2022 turned to 2023, I started to accept we would never become homeowners.

Growing up, ends never seemed to quite meet as one of five kids to Irish immigrants. As an adult, I thought I’d shoved myself up to the middle class through a mix of grit, graft and good luck.

Then, the COVID-era price surge seemed like it would lock me and scores of others out of the Canadian Dream forever.

I was throwing myself a fairly epic pity party when a literal sign in the form of a note slipped under our apartment door alerting us that pending final approval our mid-century building was officially being torn down so a new one could go up.

We were going to be demovicted. The Sisyphean search resumed.

By spring 2023, we had managed to up our down payment considerably. We lived very frugally, cooking close to every single meal at home for three years straight. For entertainment, we’d eat said meals sitting on our sagging couch watching HGTV. While the vast majority of our improved budget came from extreme saving, we also cashed in a very small family gift and I got a better paying job.

Even though we were now armed with a budget in the low $900,000s we knew buying any house within the city limits would be a battle. We considered townhomes though I was wary about paying maintenance fees on top of an eye-poppingly large mortgage payment. We bid on a detached house we were meh about and lost out on that one too.

One day in April 2023 I spotted a listing for a skinny semi with cedar shingles less than five kilometres north-east of our apartment. I then tried to talk The Husband out of going to the open house. Seeing yet another house was pointless, I argued. The Husband countered that our rental was going to be demolished soon. We saw the two-bedroom, one-bathroom hidden gem on a sunny Sunday. It was just right.

The fourth time was the charm

We got the boulder up and over the hill.

After years of searching and four offers, we closed and moved into our first home in early July 2023.

Since getting the keys there’s been some unpleasant (and pricey) surprises. Still I’m thrilled.

’Im writing this while overlooking my tree-lined backyard, which still seems slightly unreal or, er, more precisely like a movie. Instead of being a cynical hero in a time loop I now feel like I’m a neurotic heroine in a Nancy Meyers movie with an absurdly adorable abode of my own.

Albeit, I’m a heroine with champagne tastes on a Prosecco budget … after all I’m finally! happily! house poor now.

Melissa Dunne is a content creator in Toronto.