So my lease for my apartment is up toward the end of this year, and now that I can work remote, I’m thinking of moving somewhere less expensive and finally buying a home. Can anyone with experience give me advice on the process or resources I can use? Not only am I a total noob, but I don’t talk to my family and my friends aren’t homeowners either, so I’m not sure where to start. Googling presents me with so much info that I’m a bit overwhelmed.

  •  autumn (she/they)   ( @autumn@beehaw.org ) English
    5•1 year ago

    congrats on starting the process! i bought a house in the US in january (with my partner, unmarried), so this is still pretty fresh. in addition to @MariaTacobellina@beehaw.org’s excellent advice:

    • the first year is expensive. you’ll find out you want new/different furniture for the house. you’ll find out it needs repairs you didn’t see. you’ll find out you need a tree removed because it’s endangering the house. you’ll find out every third lightbulb is out. i knew this would happen, but i didn’t realize just how expensive it would be, and i wish i would have budgeted a bit more in that category!
    • make sure your home inspector goes through every little detail of the house. get estimates on any work that needs to be done, and see if the seller will offer you an allowance for that (usually this comes off the sale price of the house). our house sale price was taken down by $10k for foundation issues alone. they also took the price down for the floors (they were wrecked) and the back deck repairs.
    • negotiate the price down for every little thing.
    • if you can, try to do lots of things yourself. our yard was a mess, so we spent many weekends working on cleaning it up to be more pleasant. my partner redid the plumbing in our crawlspace because it was a mess. we painted the interior of the garage ourselves. my partner redid the electrical work in the garage as well. you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll probably mess up here and there, but i find it much more rewarding to do it ourselves. not only that, but you’ll save money and be sure that the quality is up to your standards.
    • try to see the house as what it could be, not what it is right now. if you can do that, you’ll have a lot more options. we got a good deal on our house because lots of folks could only see the bad things.