Own Your own Home

When I was 18 (much like my high school students), I thought I was ready for adulthood.  I thought that when you hit your 20s, you’d really start to feel like you had some control over your life.

Instead, my 20s were a time of loss, depression, and uncertainty. It was an unmoored and stressful time that didn't match my expectations. I moved every two years and never knew when my living situation might change again. On top of that, I didn’t know that adulthood often means seeing your friends once a month instead of every day.  I remember my roommates and I buying a coffee table from Goodwill with one leg missing, so we made a "leg" out of a stack of books and used that as our living room coffee table.  That's pretty much how the whole decade was.

I had chosen to be an educator because, as I used to tell my mom, “I’d rather live in a cardboard box and do something I love than make a lot of money and hate my life.” Always the binary thinker - as though there’s not a million options between those two. I loved it with all my heart, but, I had given up on the idea that I could buy a house someday.  I truly thought it would never happen.

I also had a lot of completely wrong ideas about buying a home.  I thought you had to have at least 20% of a purchase price to put down as a down payment (you don’t).  I thought I couldn’t afford a mortgage. When I was 35, I had yet another roommate tell me I had to move out because she was getting married, and  in my desperate search for an apartment that fit my budget, I stumbled upon some mortgage calculators that made it seem like I really could afford to buy.  I had a VERY small amount saved up thanks to pandemic stimmy checks and a bonus at work, so I started at least exploring the option.

My name is Kathleen Bradford, and I am now a mortgage loan originator.  I got into this work because I had a fantastic experience buying my first home (a 975-square-foot condo I still live in).

My real estate agent cried when we met to do our final inspection. She reminded me that it was the 1970s before a woman could sign up for a line of credit without someone else’s signature but here I was, buying a home on my own.  Her pride in me gave me permission to be proud of myself, too.

She was incredibly kind and patient and helpful with someone who had literally no idea what they were doing.

As I transition from my time education into mortgage loan originating, my goal is to be the same.  I want to help people feel the way I felt when they finally own their own home.  I want to help them understand every piece of the process and to assuage their anxiety the way she assuaged mine.

I want everyone, even underpaid educators, to be able to own a home.  Because rent is too damn high.

You can reach me at kbradford@uhlsinc.com or 405-323-7061.