Buying A Home
Pwitty2005
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
How long would you house hunt before compromising your needs/wants?
I have been watching the real estate listings for our area for over a year casually and quite seriously since last October when we were pre-approved for our mortgage. We aren't overly picky about the size or style of the house...we would like something rural that has few neighbors or at least a good amount of space between houses, is within a 15 minute commute from work, is in good enough condition for an FHA loan and hopefully has a garage (or at least room to build one later).
I don't feel like we are being overly picky and our real estate agent has assured us that these things are reasonable within our budget. We kept waiting for Spring since the market picks up once the weather is nice, but so far there've only been two houses we really loved (one accepted a different offer right before we submitted ours and the other was not able to be financed due to some title/deed issues).
There are some houses that are much more suburban/urban than we were hoping for that are around half the price that we would be willing to spend on a more ideal house/location...so it's starting to become tempting to buy one of these and consider it a starter home.
We are currently in a month to month lease, so there is no hard deadline that we need to purchase a house by, but I hate my current neighborhood and it seems to only get noisier and worse during the Summer. Also, we are holding off on starting a family until we have purchased and settled in to a new place...so there are a lot of reasons I'd like to move sooner than later.
So my questions for the community are:
How long did you hunt for the "perfect" house before buying it? (or how long have you been searching if you haven't found it yet?)
Did you make any compromises on what you had originally wanted/hoped for?
How long would you search before deciding that you need to re-asses your needs/wants?
Re: How long would you house hunt before compromising your needs/wants?
Tough questions that we all must face! The are so many factors that go into a house, it is rare when everything is perfect.
The most important things to look at with a house are size, layout (somewhat), and location. Because those are the things that really can't be changed. Ugly, outdated kitchen? Just factor in the cost of redoing it down the road. Some crazy person painted the living room neon pink? Look past that. Re-painting is an easy fix.
For me, I had to reassess my needs/wants almost right away. The most important factors for me were to buy a multi-family property so I could rent some of the house out and for the side I would live in to be at least 800 square feet. That was all reasonable in my budget. The part I had to almost immediately sacrifice was my years long DREAM of a huge, walk-in closet. Where I live, most of the homes are 80-120 years old and walk-in closets don't exist. That's okay. I got creative and will be turning a small bedroom in my home into my dream closet later this summer.
One of my other conditions was all the major systems (ie plumbing, electricity, roof, etc.) had to be functioning and in good condition with no major repairs needed. Changed my mind on that also when the house I bought was such an amazing deal, even though it didn't have electricity on one side because all the copper wiring had been stolen. Saving tens of thousands of dollars was definitely worth ponying up $2200 to fix the electricity before moving in
.
So to answer your question, there is no set answer for when to settle. But what really helped me was writing it all out, a pro/con evaluation of each property. Also, ask yourself if it would kill you to wait another 6 months, 1 year, etc. Your age plays a role in this too since you are waiting to TTC till you have a home. So think through all these things first.
We were on the fence between a single family pricier home and a less pricey condo. After about 6 months of searching, we lucked out with a condo we saw that about the same sq footage as the SFHs we were looking at and was almost 100k cheaper AND the condo fee was awesomely low. So we will compromise in this place for perhaps 5 years or so and then probably start looking again. If we waited until the summer, we might have lucked out on something but inventory has been so low and demand so high, that I just didn't want to chance losing the condo. I'm just happy to not pay rent and to have our own space!
In our current home (our 2nd), we set a high end budget of $300k. We bought this place for $317k. It hardly affected our monthly payment, and it did take on a bit more for DP (we did 20%), however, it had new roof, windows, AC, water heater, and the sellers did a $1,500 repair to the existing furnace for us due to the inspection results of it (it needed to be repaired). So for us, we compromised a bit on the price but we got a 1990's home with new mechanicals, which in today's dollars, is a really big deal.
I would consider the whole package. Definitely don't compromise on location as far as safety, resale, and schools are concerned, but maybe the ideal home with lots of space around it just doesn't exist yet. Perhaps you can find a home in a more suburban setting that has a private lot or backs up to woods, etc.
PPs are right, though. Don't let the looks sway your decision. You can always change fixtures, carpets, kitchens, and paint, etc.
I feel your pain. When I bought my house three years ago, the master bedroom had laminate flooring that looked like fake green marble. One of the most hideous floors I have ever seen, lol. Unfortunately, I still have that floor. As ugly as it is, it is serviceable for now while I fix/upgrade/update more important areas. I had originally planned to tackle it ahead of other things, but that didn't make sense and it will end up being my last project. I am putting French doors and a deck off of that room and want to wait until all of that is done, before putting in a new floor where there will be a lot of construction.
Prioritize the wants -
The rest depends on your local market, the inventory available and the turnover rate. (In other words how many do you have to choose from and how often does one that meets the NEEDS and price come on the market. )
Your timeline to be in a house - flexible or not etc.
We looked for 6 months for the first house and 4 years for the second.
First, there's no such thing as the "perfect" house. No matter what style I've chosen in the past, there's always some features I've given up. Until they make mountain ski lodge homes in tropical paradises yet walking distance to amazing desert hikes with views of Sajuaro cacti, there's just not the perfect house.
But yes, you can usually find a house that meets most of your criteria. Have you tried doing a CARVER-type matrix to prioritize what you want? This helped with selecting my most recent home because it was in an area that I wasn't familiar with (2000+ miles from where I lived) and I had a plethora of ideas of what I might be looking for. The initial application of a CARVER matrix was for military operations; however, it still works well for prioritizing a wide set of criteria like a home purchase.
House #2 we looked for 4 years. (We live in an area with little inventory in the area we wanted, layout we wanted and price range we wanted. We still had to add 60K in renovations.
NO house is perfect - and how you will use your house /space changes over time.
Set your priorities. List your NEEDS then make a separate list of WANTS.
Make sure you have your needs met at a price that is easily affordable. Then consider wants. You will not get everything.