My wife and I are about 3 weeks from closing on our first house and I am losing my god damn mind. All of our finances/budget work out while still having savings for emergency repairs, our inspection went well after having to back out on the first we offered on (tree fell on the house after offer was accepted, thought we could fix but it was a wash) and we really like the area and first impressions of our neighbors.
I know buying a house is a top “most stressful thing” an average person can go through, but this is a lot harder than I thought and I didn’t downplay it in my head. I am guessing I will feel like this for the first year or two and progressively it will become normal right? We have a lot of support from our families (financially, emotionally and labor/handypeople) so I am still optimistic about the whole thing, but my appetite is non existent and insomnia seems to be working in overdrive.
When you’re tired from work but you’ve still got to clean the whole thing to ‘protect your investment’.
Also because it’s nice to live somewhere clean and tidy?
Our house has a partial park view. It’s nice. And, in about 3 years we’ll have a full park view because the pipeline running through the city is undermining the foundation of every house in the neighborhood and we’re all slowly sliding into the park.
But you’re going to be fine…
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This was my initial thought as well, and I hope I’m wrong too.
Our first home was at a price of ~150% of our gross wage combined. We found the payments very manageable; and although I was stressed, it was more my youth as a poor kid than the reality of the budgeting before us.
Thankfully she had the confidence for us both! After a few months when I saw the numbers were as she predicted, I got better about it.
I dunno about that. I bought a house well within what I could afford. The bank actually thought we made a mistake and reminded us they would approve a loan double the size of what we asked.
All it takes is two or three really expensive things needing work at the same time to blow your budget out of the water. And often there’s no clear answer on what’s truly urgent.
Congratulations! May your new life as homeowners bring you happiness!
Make sure you know where the water shutoff valves are, and that the electric breakers are labelled. And do not, I repeat, DO NOT start any DYI project on a Friday afternoon.
I think after 18 months or so you will have a good feeling for what you bought. There will still be things to do. There will ALWAYS be things to do (some of which will be very expensive). But as far as coming to terms with exactly where everything is, what the quirks are, and whether you can live with them, you need all 4 seasons and a bit.
Didn’t think about seeing how everything holds up during all the seasons. Windows and AC are only a few years old but the furnace is closer to end of life than new. Guess we will see how it goes this winter. I’m sure there will be a lot more to consider that I don’t even know about yet.
We got a new furnace and the super old one was basically just as good. Get a good carbon monoxide alarm for your bedroom and also one right by the machine.
The timeframe all depends on the house. Over the last 30 years, we’ve bought three homes. The first one was an absolute breeze and never caused us heartache. The second one, was a bit of a troublemaker but we just worked our way from room to room, rehabbing the entire house a little bit at a time.
This last one has been a nightmare for the 4 years we’ve owned it. We’ve blown through our savings and still don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Without going into needless detail, on top of a qualified home inspector, I would suggest going to the city/county permitting office to make sure permits were pulled for anything that’s been recently done. In our case, the the biggest issue with this property was that apartment over garage was done illegally and we had to completely gut and start over. Unfortunately, the entire reason we picked this house was for that apartment as it was for our daughter to live in.
My intention isn’t to scare you but just be sure to perform due diligence and don’t be afraid to further investigate potential issues.
Your latest house is pretty much what I am expecting as a FTHB. Permits have been my main concern after some quick searches. There’s not a lot of updates made in recent years to the place that would require them, but who knows what was done that wasn’t visible during inspection. I know it should be ok, but I never had to deal with this before so it’s just another thing added to the list.
The thing that pisses me off about this, is how the previous owner who illegally modified the house isn’t instantly on the hook for the amount it elevated the house price, and you would have to proactively litigate them in civil court (if that’s even legal).
I agree, we had the option to sue the seller but the reality is, even if we spend a ton of money to take him to court, there’s no guaranteed payment at the end. We decided to focus on fixing the problem rather than try to get compensation from them.
There is absolutely no system in place to protect people from something like this. The inspector didn’t find it, the realty attorneys didn’t find it, the realtors didn’t find it. We only found out about it when pulling a permit for a deck.
Yep. Just another example of how the system is designed to protect the existing capital and landowners over what is fair or just.
After all the painting is done
My grandpa was a painter for 45 years and already was asking us what we want to do. Guess we need to figure that out faster
Paint it before you move in.
It’s been about ten years in my house, the list of needed repairs is getting longer faster than I can fix them.
The house is probably at least a hundred years old, so you might not have that issue.
This one is about 90…oh no
More frustrating: for every little thing you do manage to fix, three new jobs pop up!
And if you’re as talented as me, those three new things are a direct result of attempting to fix the first one!
Ouch!
The magic wears off as soon as the first expensive thing breaks.
Just got past 1 year ownership of a new build and had the 1-year warranty inspection done and worked with the builder to do the repairs. I think it has only started to calm down now, as we’ve finally experienced one year of living in the house and we now know what to expect throughout the year. Except for emergencies and major unexpected issues of course.
It all becomes normal after a while but I still stress about the things that could take it away. Treefalls during big storms and fire hazards and places where people might trip and gutter overflows and was that a carpenter ant and and and.
A now, ten years later, we’re doing some minor remodeling and a lot of those money stresses and fears of the unknown are coming back.
The first house our offer was accepted on had a large tree (the biggest tree I ever saw IRL besides some state parks) and had a credit to get it removed. 3 days after our offer was accepted a big storm came through and a branch fell, destroying the roof on the back half. We went through with the inspection because they told us insurance was replacing it, but we walked into a house with water going from the room to the basement. There was even water pooling in the breaker box. We mentioned everything we found to them and they just said “well our neighbor is the contractor and he can do the roof and some of the walls. If you guys want to talk to insurance or find another contractor that’s fine”. We backed out after that.
Edit: There were multiple broken struts in the roof and they “didn’t know about” and said the neighbor could fix them. We looked up the neighbor and he’s just some guy with an LLC doing handy work. Nothing against that but when it comes to structural work, I would want an artitect or engineer to take a look, not some handyman who can “fix it” while missing a lot of the damage our inspector found.
Dodged that bullet, wow.
Dodged an artillery shell!
Honestly for me it was when we moved in that things started getting more calm.
I did not like all the uncertainty of the transaction hanging above my head.
Now it’s been a few years and we’ve added gardens and done a few upgrades and we have our furniture and spaces, and it’s my happy place.
Everything you’re feeling is normal. Stay optimistic. We were in your shoes not that long ago and went through the same thing. Keep breathing, deep breaths, maybe take up some breath focused meditation for 15-20 mins a day. Or even some yoga can calm your nervous system. There will be unexpected setbacks but you’re going to work through it all and come out the other side just fine. Personally, I’ve had to redirect my attention to just tackling one thing at a time and keep plugging away so I don’t get overwhelmed with the magnitude of all the issues together.
How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
eh you get used to it. for me the anxiety from first house went down within a few weeks/months after moving in.
It’s still a shit process every time. so ya never get used to the shit process of selling and buying a house.
I hear some folk have sweet stories of fantasy where rainbows and birds bring them the keys but I didn’t get those in my filtered reality bubble.
maybe it’s them there rich folk I been hearin’ bout.
The intense, intense, like your feeling pretty much dies down after closing and you can get a bit of a high having your own place. Assuming its a fixer upper (I have no basis for anything else given affordability in my lifetime) you will unfortunately get headaches with repairs and refurbishing and taxes and all that good stuff. Assuming you bought something you could afford with a 15 year fixed (now you see why my experiences are with fixer uppers) but got a 30 year fixed but overpaying on a 15 year timeline you will have a nice feeling knowing you can drop down to pay the minimum if things are tough and then if you can keep the overpayments going for 5 years or so you will get to the point where its almost impossible to be underwater which is a great feeling. If you have assesments (I have never had something with its own private lot) you can find that the taxes and assesments alone can be pretty close to what rent would be depending on how crazy or reasonable the rental market it but at least it stays stable at or below what rent would be so that is nice, but it never just goes away as an expense and even if you have your own plot if you are not spending what typical assesments are for upkeep then you are likely letting your place go.
