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Home-buyers should avoid these mistakes when purchasing their first houses.
- Buying a home is a process that requires years of saving, careful planning, and a ton of effort to ensure you find the perfect place.
- But when you buy your first home, there are certain things you may not realize you should do, and not knowing can have huge financial consequences.
- Here are five mistakes I made when I bought my first home that could have been avoided.
My wife and I bought our first home back in early 2011. It was a charming, ranch-style house nestled just below the foothills of Glendale, California that was built in 1928. It still boasted many of its original charms, such as a massive window looking out on a 2,450-foot mountain, a stucco fireplace, and a vintage dining room chandelier with stained glass panels.
We did a lot of things right during the home-buying process, one of them simply being the timing: We bought while the housing market was still near a multi-year nadir due to the financial crisis, and the property appreciated remarkably over the next five years. We also saw the potential in the large but neglected and overgrown yard and the rundown garage, which we cleared and restored, respectively, over the course of several months.
Of course, being first-time homebuyers, we also made plenty of mistakes. Some of them turned out to be relatively minor, such as not repainting rooms before moving in furniture or choosing the wrong places for storing cleaning supplies, linens, and other household goods. These issues could be resolved quickly and without long-term issue.
But we also made a few mistakes that would prove to be much larger problems that often came with commensurate costs.