How, Which, and Why

Building a holistic home-buying training curriculum

Nov 20, 2024

Silhouette of a shorefront home backlit by a sunset — Sunset on Squirrel Island. Hana and I were privileged to spend a week there this past summer with some dear (newly-wed!) friends. Picturesque!

Over these last few months, I’ve been writing curriculum and building the structure for a set of courses to help renters and buyers build a more just and integrated real estate process. What does that look like?

Three levels

The most fundamental job of a realtor -- Level 1 -- is the technical aspect of shepherding your transaction across the finish line. Acquiring a mortgage, organizing tours, submitting offers, conducting inspections, negotiating concessions, etc. These are technical tasks that have clear metrics of success and failure.

The more significant (and difficult) job of a realtor -- Level 2 -- is the strategic aspect of helping you make a right and wise decision. This level is about doing the Level 1 tasks well, the hacks or techniques that bring the best outcomes from minimal effort. All realtors and lenders can agree on Level 1 materials, but Level 2 is where our specific approaches diverge from each other.

So that’s two levels, technical and strategic. What’s Level 3, you ask? This is where meaning and purpose comes in. Level 3 is for helping you understand how your home fits into your values, hopes, and beliefs. This work is closest to what I trained in seminary for (pastoral care!). Fields like science or economics have minimal power in Level 3 conversations: these are questions of values. At this level, we’re asking questions about what home means and what home is for, not just how to acquire one. Frankly, I don’t encounter many realtors working at this level at all.1

I’ve been building courses to help folks at all three of these levels. I’m going to be filming and editing this content over the coming weeks and months. The courses will likely be hosted on Circle.so, but I’m weighing options — feel free to give a recommendation.

So to recap:

Level 1: “How do I buy a home?”

Technical training on finances, offers, home inspections, timelines, etc. What is escrow? How does title insurance work? The details and minutiae. The fundamentals of buying a home, the bedrock.

Level 2: “Which home do I choose?”

Strategic guidance on how to approach the decision-making process. How cognitive biases affect decision-making. Exercises for understanding affordances, location, or floorpans. Insights on how to balance emotion with rationality when making such a pivotal choice. Everything that will help you feel more confident and less confused in your decision between various houses.

Level 3: “Why does home matter?”

Meaningful content on what it means to find and form a home. Navigating the collisions between our highest aims for our lives and the messy realities of the actual neighborhoods we live in (questions arising from gentrification, sustainability and climate change, colonization…). Level 3 is where we can start having some fun with the content — film, art, poetry, it’s all fair game! Whatever brings insight into home and belonging. This material is not necessarily best suited for a course, so I’m weighing options for how to collect and present it. This Substack/blog has been a good space for some preliminary explorations of questions at this level, but what’s next? What about a podcast interviewing others with insights towards this question? A YouTube channel? Should I be more consistent in posting reels and tiktoks?!

Thanks for reading How to Get Home! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Putting it all together

A holistic real estate process requires confidence and understanding at all three of these levels. You can certainly buy a house with an exclusive focus on Level 1 concerns, but you’ll leave a lot of value on the table by not considering the strategic best practices of Level 2. And those big-picture concerns of Level 3? Well... There’s no end to sorting out what it means to be human of course, but avoiding those conversations won’t end well. And there’s scarcely a better opportunity to reflect on what you want from your life than when you change where you live. Moreover, dramatic shifts at Level 3 will cascade down into how you pursue decisions at Level 1 and Level 2. Or, from the other side, the bald realities of what’s available to you technically at Level 1 will flow upwards and affect the conversations we need to have at Level 3.

I’m building these three levels of training because they all matter, in their own ways. I’m also separating them out this way so that you’ll be able to find your way more efficiently to the material that matters most to you. Choose your own adventure. Plenty of folks have a solid understanding of the Level 1 material, primarily because it’s not that hard to find elsewhere.2 But the next two levels are more proprietary to my approach and my background. These are the levels where I’m bringing my training in politics, theology, philosophy, economics, etc to bear. I’ve tried to write the material to be as open and welcoming as possible to folks from all backgrounds, even as I’m firm in my commitments to justice and sustainability. I hope you’ll find something here that resonates with where you’re at.

Birthing a decision

My wife, Hana, is a doula. She helps her clients give birth to babies. I take a lot of my inspiration for how to pursue my work from her example -- but what do I help my clients birth? Decisions. My work is to help you make a wise choice. The house will be what the house will be; my work is to make sure you select a good one.

I don’t have a timeline for when this material will be available, but I’m hard at work on it now. If you or someone you know would benefit from early access to the materials even as they’re in process and unpolished, let me know — I’d be happy to welcome another beta tester to the team.

If you’re interested in supporting this work or even partnering in the creative process, reach out to me. I welcome collaboration, and get waaaaay more excited about what we can build together than what I can build alone. Drop a line!

This week

Rock climbing in the Black Hills! Hana and I spent the month of September on a retreat there, where I was able to organize and develop the bulk of this material. And climb a lot of beautiful rocks.

I’ll be in San Diego this weekend for the annual AAR conference (American Academy of Religion), where I’ll be on a panel discussing Affordances in Theology. If I haven’t talked your ear off about affordances at some other point already, this is a great chance to hear me do it again. I’ll be sitting next to some absolute giants in the theology realm, so I’m excited and humbled. If you’re going to be around, reach out and let’s hang.

For Thanksgiving, I’ll be in Oakland with my sister’s family! It’ll be a quick visit before I’m back to Philly, but if you want to connect, just let me know.

What I’m enjoying

It’s been a rough few months for various reasons which need no discussion here. In the midst of all this grief and struggle, here’s what I’ve been enjoying:

I’m in a Moby Dick book club, we’re known as the Dickheads. A magical, astounding book. I first read it on a friend’s recommendation probably 10 years ago? It’s just as overwhelming and profound on this re-read as well. I hope to revisit the book more frequently than once a decade from now on. An utter privilege to read with friends, as well: hearing how other people “sound” this text and thereby “sound” their own lives is a balm for the thoughtlessness and discord that’s become the prevailing norm these days.
High and Low, by Akira Kurosawa. I’ve been going back to classic films that I’d missed for some reason or another, and this one has been stuck in my head ever since I watched it. If you enjoyed Parasite, then High and Low is the conversation partner you didn’t realize Bong Joon Ho was speaking with. Also, if you’re on Letterboxd, let’s connect.

Birdsboro Climbing Quarry is a pleasant little rock climbing area just over an hour outside Philly. Fall climbing there has been a joy, both for the chance to be with friends and also the gift of experiencing foliage like this: