The buyers: Charlotte Burns, 33, veterinary anesthesiologist; Noah Johnson, 37, battery scientist
The house: a 1,850-square-foot townhome in Fairmount with four bedrooms and three bathrooms built in 1876
The price: listed for $975,000; purchased for $975,000
The agent: Sela Fallt, KW Empower
The ask: When Charlotte Burns and Noah Johnson moved back to Philadelphia in July 2024, they already knew they wanted to buy a house. They had spent the previous decade renting while they went to college and graduate school, and years of lease renewals and rent hikes had worn them down. Now that they both had steady jobs, they wanted a payment that stayed put and a home to call their own.
They started looking casually that fall. Johnson wanted a big kitchen with lots of counter space. Burns wanted enough outdoor space for a garden and a house with character. “I love the old Colonial homes,” she said. “I’ve wanted one since I was 12.” They wanted to stay in Fairmount if they could.
The search: The couple’s search was unusually brief. They had only started casually browsing listings online when Johnson bumped into their next-door neighbor, who happened to be a real estate agent. She asked him what they were hunting for. “My husband thankfully knows me quite well, so he told her what I like,” Burns said. A week later, the agent knocked on their door. “I think I found your house,” she told them.
The appeal: The house looked like the old Colonial home Burns had wanted since she was a kid. It still had several of its original details, such as the crown molding, shutters, doorknobs, hinges, marble steps, and 150-year-old wood floors. The previous owners had updated the house, Burns said, but didn’t gut it or turn it into “some modern monstrosity.”
The house also had the big kitchen Johnson wanted and space for a garden for Burns. Then there was the screened-in porch on the second floor. “I feel like that’s a rare find,” Burns said. Her other favorite feature is the third floor, which “felt like your own private suite,” she said.
The deal: The house was listed for $975,000. The couple offered the full asking price and felt good about not going over. “I really was not in the market for haggling or fighting over a house,” Burns said. “We weren’t that desperate.” There was one other offer, but it was lower, so the seller accepted theirs.
The inspection came back mostly clean. Some porch wood and window linings needed work, but the biggest issue was the HVAC system, which was more than 20 years old. Burns and Johnson negotiated a $7,500 seller’s credit for it and later replaced the HVAC and heat pump for about $8,500.
The money: Burns and Johnson bought the $975,000 house with no money down through a professional loan, a mortgage product for borrowers with high future earning potential but not necessarily years of savings. “It’s a very good option if you’re a medical professional,” Burns said. She didn’t know the loan applied to veterinarians until a colleague told her.
Unlike other low- or zero-down payment loans, a professional mortgage doesn’t require private mortgage insurance, and Burns said her student loan debt was not held against her in the same way it might have been with a conventional mortgage.
The couple actually had $100,000 in savings, most of it from Johnson, who had been working for several years after graduate school. But they decided not to put that money toward the house. They wanted to keep it as an emergency fund instead. “I feel like you should always have at least six months of emergency savings at all times,” Burns said.
Their mortgage payment was originally $7,200 a month. Recently, they paid a one-time fee of $1,200 to lower their interest rate from 7% to 6.5%, which brought their monthly payment down by about $400.
They plan to refinance if rates drop enough in the next few years.
The move: The couple closed Feb. 3 and started packing a week or two later. When they signed their lease, they had told their landlord that they might buy soon. She let them leave without issue and found new tenants within a week.
The move itself was a mess. They’d booked it for the day after the Super Bowl parade, and Fairmount was still buried in cars — including in front of their old house, where the no-parking signs Burns had ordered from the city were ignored. So Burns called the Philadelphia Parking Authority and had the cars ticketed and towed. Then, at the new house, the truck blocked the Route 48 bus, so Burns called SEPTA, and they rerouted it.
Life after close: Since moving in, the couple has been busy making the house their own. Burns has painted, wallpapered, gardened, and gotten “really into stencils,” she said. She painted the green living room herself and added an ivy stencil along the stairs.
Some days, she still can’t believe how easily everything came together. “It’s really crazy,” she said. “But you gotta let the universe do what it wants to do.”
Did you recently buy a home in the Philadelphia area or South Jersey? Share the story of how you did it. Email Inquirer real estate reporters at properties@inquirer.com.
