Money Matters
jessica490
member
Dear Community,
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.
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.
What are best/worst things about owning your own home?
What do you like best?
What do you like least?
Meaning a single family home
Re: What are best/worst things about owning your own home?
Best thing about owning our own home: We can do whatever we want! Move a wall? Sure! Tear down that ugly fireplace surround? No problem! Build an addition over the garage? Why not!
Worst thing about owning our own home: All of those things take a lot more time and money than you would ever expect. Even though we have a looooong list of all of the projects we would like to complete, we know it will probably be twenty or more years before we really feel like we've done everything to make it our dream home. We could do more sooner, but we're not willing to give up our vacation budget.
The best thing about owning my own home is the sense that it is MINE. I am finally laying down roots. I can make whatever changes I prefer to truly make it feel like home.
What I like least is how expensive it is to own a house. And I'm not even talking about the mortgage. Insurance is really high where I live and I HATE paying $3500/year for insurance I will never use, unless my house was completely totaled. I also hate all the maintenance, though some of that was my fault because I bought a foreclosure and there was a ton of deferred maintenance I knew I would have to deal with over the last few years.
Best thing for me is building the "Nest" for my family. That means cleaning and decorating how I want, but it also means getting into a community/neighborhood for the longer-term.
The bad thing is that it costs a lot more money to own a home. The fun parts are the decorating and projects, but the reality sets in for all the repairs and maintenance.
1. Oh, it's time for the gutters to be cleaned out.
2. Darn, the oven isn't working.
3. Got yard clean up to do this spring.
4. We want to paint the house's exterior, but first we have to replace some of the wooden siding.
There's a lot of not fun stuff that comes with this territory. Sometimes' DH and I drive past apartments and look and wish for a bit we lived in one like when we were singe and/or first married. We enjoyed apartment living quite a bit.
But in all the feeling of having one's own place wins out every time and we take the inconveniences of home ownership because it's OUR place.
Best thing? The fact that we can do whatever we want. Especially since we are out in the country we have zero rules or regs we have to follow since we are outside any city limits and we have an extremely relaxed county.
Worst thing? Our neighbors can also do whatever they want and also have no rules they need to follow.
I agree with previous posters. It's a lot of fun to own a home and feel like you're really investing in something, doing upgrades, decorating, etc. It's not fun to pay for repairs on things... We just got granite counter tops and a back splash we've been wanting since buying our house. It wasn't very MM, but it's made us so happy. We just finished the project this weekend and our washer decided to break down.
So now we've put out all the money for the kitchen and have to possibly buy a new washer if H can't fix ours. It's an '03 so it's not surprising it's just frustrating that it couldn't break before we did the kitchen.
I also get very stressed thinking about the selling process. H and I bought our town home knowing it was not our forever home, so thinking about selling it and trying to find our forever home scares me. In addition to the stress in saving 20% while upgrading our house to remain competitive and paying all our other bills. I would HIGHLY recommend trying to buy your "forever" home the first go round even if that means waiting a little while.
For H and I our house was our first time ever living on our own (we were 23 & 24 when we bought our house), so it's also been awesome adjusting to that. I've really enjoyed being able to do what I want.
What do you like best? I like our location and the fact that we are at the end of a dead-end street with a major road as our across the street neighbor. The main road is about 20 feet below our house so people can't see in.
What do you like least? That like the two houses next to us, our house was lived in by the original builder than a child until the child died. Then a flipper flipped the house and took care of some things but there are a lot of other repairs that need to be made. That is why we are replacing the roof since it is close to 30 years old and getting siding since it was only about $2500 more than painting and repairing the current wood slats.
What do you like best? I grew up in apartments and rental houses with my mom. She wasn't able to buy a house until I was almost 13. It means a lot to me to own a house with my family and give my girls a safe place to live and feel grounded.
What do you like least? Our house is older (built in 1926) which we love.. tons of woodwork- huge molding and baseboards, hardwood floors throughout (even in the kitchen!), original subway tiles in the downstairs bathroom, etc, etc, but it has needed some huge repairs. So far, we've gutted the kitchen, replaced the sewer line, replaced the porch, new side entrance door, redid all of the siding, new roof, new gutters, new HWT, new furnace, new sump pump, tons of new plumbing (cast iron to copper/pex), and the list goes on and on. We're getting there and in 2-3 years (still need new front door, new garage door, new upstairs bathroom, stairs refinished with a runner, and probably 10 other things I'm forgetting), it'll be exactly what we want it to be.
Worst is the responsibility it requires....of both time and money. Neither of which we have. Heating units, water heaters, appliances, lawn care, overgrown bushes and weeds. And the fact we are stuck here until we can sell... I'm honestly regretting buying a home. Without money and time to do the work and repairs... I'd rather have an apartment.
Yes! Dogs! I refused to get a dog when I was still renting. 18 months after we bought our house, my DH surprised me (we had talked about getting a dog) by bringing home our sweet little Izzy girl, who is now an indispensable fuzzy member of the family.
@FutureMrsMerati, Aaaahhhh! My wallet is hurting just reading your story about the heating system. That is absolutely awful to face such a major repair right off the bat. But it sounds like, overall, you bought at a great price at the right time
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Worst is the cost. That's a given.
Apparently I am also. My b/f in college used to always berate me for "walking so loud", but I've had others mention it also.
Not related to this post, but I'm also apparently a loud talker. Not so much that I talk loud, but my voice carries. I have had two office jobs where I literally had to talk in...what to me...was almost a whisper so I "wouldn't disturb others". Yet, ironically, in both of those jobs my desk was across from a conference room and very near a main printer. I was constantly and continually "disturbed by others", except I'm not a special snowflake and learned to just block out the constant noise and movement.