I Have 10 Apologies For Animal Crossing’s Tom Nook As A First-Time Home Buyer

I have recently started looking to buy my first home, and the more experience I have with it, the more I appreciate Animal Crossing’s Tom Nook. It’s not like I expected buying a home to be nearly as smooth a process as it is in the Animal Crossing games, but you still learn a lot that you didn’t realize about the process when you start house hunting. The more experience I get with realtors and the homes themselves, the more I appreciate how easy Nook made it to move in.

Tom Nook has earned a bad reputation from Animal Crossing fans over the years. Though some players have come to reassess the capitalist raccoon’s apparent underhandedness, I think it’s still pretty common to hear fans of the series complaining about his business practices. I’ve come to realize that Tom Nook isn’t just better than he seems, but is also a much better way to buy a house than the real deal.

10 Tom Nook's Houses Are New Constructions

You Don’t Need To Worry About How Nice A Nook Home Is

Right off the bat, one great thing about the houses in Animal Crossing (at least in New Horizons) is that they are all newly constructed for you. Buying a new construction instead of buying an older house can come with greater peace of mind. You don’t have to worry about how old the roof is, when the siding will need to be replaced, or what other wear and tear might have happened over the years since the house was initially built.

Additionally, Tom Nook even lets you choose what color you want your house to be. That means that you won’t have to worry about repainting if you find the perfect house that just isn’t the perfect color. While newly constructed houses are by no means a fictional creation of Animal Crossing, they can also be pretty expensive, but you don’t have to worry about that with Tom Nook.

9 Tom Nook Doesn't Require Any Info To Approve You For A Loan

No Need For Background Information Or Credit Checks

Tom Nook has no problem loaning bells to players without knowing anything about them. This is a pretty big change from the real-life pre-approval process needed to get a loan. Getting pre-approved means sending a ton of personal information to your bank or private lender and waiting for them to assess it. The process is also a little more complicated for folks like me who don’t just work one steady job, as there is more information that I have to collect and send in.

There are also a few hitches with the pre-approval process. Once pre-approved, it can last as few as 60 days and rarely longer than 90 days. So, you don’t want to get pre-approved too early, or you’ll have to do it again. However, you also don’t want to wait too long, because some sellers want offers quickly, and you might not have time to get pre-approved before they accept another offer. Tom Nook solves this issue by simply lending money to anyone and being surprisingly flexible with the loans.

8 Tom Nook Accepts Payment At Any Time

Nook Loans Are Never Actually Due

Tom Nook doesn’t just make it easy to get a loan, he also makes paying one back incredibly simple. Nook offers, in his own words, “zero-interest financing,” and he allows you to pay your loan back at any rate. It’s hard to say for sure whether Nook is overcharging the player for their initial loan, since there’s no way to gauge what his actual costs are for making your home, but the price of the initial loan stays steady until the player pays it off.

Nook also doesn’t have a due date or require payments on a certain schedule. I would be able to look at a much wider range of homes if there was no due date or monthly payment required for my mortgage. The idea of being able to just choose a home I liked as long as I paid it off at some point, with no deadlines involved, sounds like a dream come true compared to the harsh reality of monthly payments and the penalties for missing them.

7 Tom Nook Saved Me Having To Tour A Bunch Of Properties

Searching For The Right House Can Be Exhausting

Perhaps one of the most frustrating parts of the home-buying process is having to tour properties. While some sellers are very straightforward about the issues with their homes, others go to great lengths to take pictures that conveniently leave out glaring issues like a moldy bathroom ceiling or water damage. Because it’s impossible to know what a house looks like without seeing it for myself, touring properties has become a part of my weekly routine. It’s not fun driving 40+ minutes to see what appeared to be a nice house only to find out the floors are completely crooked.

House shopping has become almost like a part-time job for me. After spending multiple weekends and evenings traveling around to different homes only to discover many of them have hidden flaws that their descriptions or pictures didn't disclose, I'm left me wishing a nice little raccoon would come along and set up a shack for me on an island somewhere. At this point, the tent wouldn’t even seem that bad, seeing as empty lots can cost as much as a nice condo in some areas.

6 Tom Nook Lets You Work Off Your Mortgage However You Want

Tom Nook Pays You For Almost Anything You Bring Him

People have pointed out how nice it is that Tom Nook lets you pay off your mortgage whenever you want, but I think an underrated aspect of this is that Nook also lets you do it however you want. Yes, Nook only accepts Bells, but he’s also more than willing to pay for pretty much anything you bring him. Found a bug, a seashell, or some wild fruit lying around? Nook will pay you for it, sometimes handsomely. Nook essentially lets you pay off your mortgage through a barter system, since he’s so willing to buy random items.

I plan to pay for part of my down payment by selling off a significant portion of my Magic: The Gathering collection. It’d be very convenient if I could just carry it on down to Nook’s Cranny and get a lump sum for it, instead of having to inventory all my cards and see what they’re worth. It’d also be very nice if I could just take a stroll down to the beach and pick up some shells to help make monthly payments.

5 No Down Payment Is Needed For An Animal Crossing House

Real Homes Typically Require A Hefty Down Payment

Part of the reason I was attracted to buying a home instead of continuing to rent is that the monthly cost of a mortgage and property taxes is significantly cheaper than most rentals in my area. However, a major barrier to entry for most people when it comes to buying a home is making the down payment. Saving up tens of thousands of dollars to make a down payment is no easy feat, which is a shame, as I feel like I’ve thrown away a lot of money on rent instead of working toward owning a home.

When it comes to buying a home in Animal Crossing, no down payment is needed. Tom Nook just trusts that you’ll pay off your loan at some point and gets you set up with a new home free of charge. It’s no wonder KK Slider can play his acoustic guitar for a living, since he knows if he ever needs to settle down, Tom Nook will just hand him a house.

4 Tom Nook Has Never Tried To Trick Me Into Buying A Property

Tom Nook’s Homes Are Always What They Appear To Be

I remember playing the GameCube Animal Crossing as a kid and joking about how Tom Nook was an underhanded businessman, but he doesn’t hold a candle to some in the real world. Now, I want to start by saying that the majority of realtors I have been in contact with have seemed to conduct honest business. However, I still go into each new relationship with a heavy dose of skepticism given my first attempt at buying a condo.

Things seemed to be going smoothly with my first realtor: they had been very helpful in recommending lenders who were willing to work with freelancers like me and made sure to keep me informed about new offers on the place I was looking at. However, while my bank approved me for a loan, they wouldn’t let me use it for the place my realtor had been showing me because it had been flagged as unsafe to live in. Despite all the offers my realtor assured me kept flowing into the place, it sat on the market for over two years.

3 Tom Nook Doesn't Work With Questionable Lenders

Tom Nook Lends Money Himself, And Doesn’t Recommend Questionable Sources

Not only has Tom Nook not tried to offload any shady properties on me, but he also hasn’t recommended any questionable lenders for my mortgage. Before getting pre-approved by my bank, I had also gone through the process with a lender recommended by my first realtor. That independent lender had been more than willing to give me a loan for the same building my bank deemed unfit for living (which is likely why my realtor had recommended using them over a bank or other large mortgage company).

Forget Tom Nook, these are the kind of underhanded business practices that would make Animal Crossing's Animal Crossing's Jolly Redd blush. I was fortunate enough that I had a while left on my lease at the time and didn’t feel pressured to buy right away. However, I could see a situation where I might have fallen for this if I had been more desperate to buy quickly. First-time buyers should do their best to double-check anytime someone seems a little too eager to lend them a large sum of money.

2 There Are No Surprise Repairs With A Tom Nook House

Nook Houses Never Fall Into Disrepair

While I am still on the hunt for my first house, many of my friends have become homeowners within the last five or so years. During that time, I have heard many of them complain about hidden flaws that weren’t found during an inspection or surprise repairs that popped up shortly after buying due to the age of their new home. These hidden costs are something that I keep in mind when looking for a place so as not to get out of my depth.

This is another real-life worry that there is no need for in the world of Animal Crossing. Tom Nook’s homes are all perfectly constructed and never suffer any sort of damage over time. If you decide you want your house to be even nicer, Nook is also willing to make it bigger with the same flexibility in payment as the initial construction.

1 Tom Nook Doesn't Take Competing Offers In Animal Crossing

You Get A Home As Soon As You Want It From Tom Nook

Sending in an offer for a home can be stressful, especially given everything it takes to get to that point. After touring to find the right home, getting pre-approved, and deciding on the right lender, you still might not get to buy the home you want if someone puts in a better offer for it. Not only is it discouraging to lose out on an offer for a home you were excited about, but it also means taking a step back to the house-hunting phase.

Since Tom Nook makes a house specifically for you and just gives you the price, there is no worry that you won’t get the house you want in Animal Crossing. While I would have counted myself among Tom Nook’s critics at one point in time, the more I experience the reality of home buying, the more I grow to appreciate how easy he makes the process. Nook may brand himself as a business tycoon, but his practices feel like charity compared to real life.