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The 10 smartest things I did before I bought my first house

Christopher Curley   

Buying a house

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

There are things you should consider doing before buying a new house.

  • Buying a house is one of the most expensive purchases you make.
  • There are some things you can do before buying a house that can save you money, time, and stress during the moving process.
  • Here are the 10 smartest things I did before buying my first house.

In the early fall of 2017, my wife and I received a notice from our landlord that we'd been anticipating for over a year. Our two-year lease was transforming into a month-to-month affair. We would have to move so he could renovate and convert our apartment to an Airbnb.

We were faced with a tough choice: Continue to rent in New Orleans, a city we'd made our home since 2011, but was experiencing an increasingly hostile rental market, or take the leap into homeownership. Whatever we decided, it had to be fast. The letter gave us three months.

So I dialed back my freelance work and made it my part-time job to learn as much about buying a house as possible. We closed in January of 2018 - just in the nick of time.

Here are a few of the smartest things I did before buying my first home:

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