Buying a house is an adventure. It has a quest, hero, damsels in distress (guess who?) and villains. My fiancé and I have recently joined the masses in this pursuit to buy a house. We have discovered that sometimes, the real estate agent fits into the black cape of the villain.

When we entered the housing market with the blush of naivety, they circled around us as though we were prey. I could almost hear ‘fresh meat’! They pounded us with a smattering of questions ‘How much are you willing to pay?’ ‘Have you been looking for long?’ Innocently, we answered honestly.

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Hence, our first mistake. We have since learnt that silence is golden. Upon learning that we are first home buyers, most real estate agents got a gleam in their eye that rivals Sweeney Todd’s. Even the nice ones. First moral of the story: the real estate agent is on the side of the seller, not the buyer.

One response we encounter as a lesbian couple is confusion about who is buying the house. Are we sisters? No. One real estate lady found it so difficult to comprehend that in the end she just talked to my girlfriend. So, Person, what do you do for a living? Person, come outside and look at the low maintenance courtyard! See how the garage door rolls up to create double the space! Oh, the niftiness! ‘She meant to say Person and Maya.’ my beloved reassured me. Of course…

Did you know that the first thing the real estate agent asks is for your phone number? Without the decency of buying you a drink first! They use it, too! One scarily enthusiastic agent rang us three times in one day. Handy tip: if you don’t want to receive phone calls, give them your email address and make it a business one.

Like some people I’ve met, when you say no, they just try harder. Often, we have been stuck, feeling helpless, whilst some hard selling agent tries to sweet talk us into buying a property we don’t want. When we didn’t give a particular agent the response he was hoping for, he behaved like a jilted lover. Unfortunately, the housing scene is as small as the gay scene and when we ran into him at the next place, he berated us for running out on him.

We have journeyed across some strange sites. One that stands out in my mind is the time we came across a laundry in the hallway cupboard. I’m not joking. ‘Very European.’, apparently. I am all for European; one property seduced me with the picture of its little French-style courtyard on realestate.com. I could just imagine sitting out there on a summer’s morning, birds chirping, perusing the paper. Unfortunately, in reality, there was only enough room out there for either the paper..the table..or myself. Second moral: beware the perils of internet dating.

Sometimes, though, it is not the aesthetic of the house but the way it makes you feel. As we elegantly wrote on one brochure: ‘carpets don’t match, smells of dog pee, we both like it but don’t know why.’ Don’t worry, we haven’t bought it! There are things that you can live with and there are things you can live without.

Still, we are only on the first leg of our journey and there is still a delicious sense of excitement about the adventure. Despite our unfortunate encounters with more Wicked Witches than Princess Charmings, I can’t wait for the next chapter.

Maya Muir