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9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

March 6, 2017 By Thinking of Someday

9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

1. Make A List: Must Haves vs Nice To Have

Make a list of your must haves vs nice to haves.  However, remember to be flexible, to an extent, once you start to look at homes.  When we made our list for our first home we focused on our must-haves.  As we started to view homes we realized that although some things were must-haves, if the home didn’t have every single must-have then that was ok as long as it was something we were willing to compromise on for that particular house.  For example, we wanted an open-concept house, but the home we bought is not completely an open-concept.  Yet, it is open enough that it wasn’t a deal breaker for us.

Make sure to take into consideration how many bedrooms or extra rooms you will really need.  You don’t need a lot of rooms if you have no use for them.  However, you don’t want to buy a house and realize you have come up short because you didn’t take into account needing a room for an office or once you decide to expand your family, now you don’t have a guest room.

Try to think ahead: Is your family going to be growing?  Do you want or need a basement or a bonus room?  Does your wife/husband want to be a stay at home parent meaning you can only take on so much mortgage?

Other things to consider when making your list is

  • location
  • distance from your job
  • school ratings,
  • and distance from interstate and major highways if used frequently.

2. New Build vs Established Neighborhood vs Fixer-Upper

There are pros and cons to each.  With a new build, you might be able to pick your floor plan as well as certain finishes.  You might even be able to pick your lot.

With an established neighborhood it’s kind of like what you see is what you get.  However, this might not be a bad thing because you will be able to see what the neighborhood is already like.  For example, do people tend to keep their grass cut?  Are people constantly parking in the street?  Does it seem like people are taking pride in their neighborhood or do they not care?

If you’re considering a fixer-upper, then there are basically two types –
  1. the one that needs to be completely gutted and finished before moving in, and
  2. the one that is practically move-in ready, but needs some updating to suit your taste.
With either of these, you will have to take into consideration your budget and if you can afford to fix up a house.  You should factor these costs into your budget along with the time frame it will take to get these things done.  Also, keep in mind that just because you can’t afford one fixer-upper doesn’t mean you can’t afford a fixer-upper at all.  You just have to choose something within your budget.

As much as we are into budgeting, we didn’t quite consider the money it would take to update our entire house.  However, it’s working out for us. It’s taking us a little longer than we expected, but that’s because we pay cash for everything.

3. Set Your Budget

Determine what your budget for your house should be and be realistic about it.  And if you’re not doing an actual budget then now is the time to start – before you buy a house that is.  If you need a budget template to use then check out our free one by subscribing to our blog and check out this blog post to help you get started.

Things that you should take into consideration when determining your budget are
  • any current bills/debt that you now have,
  • utilities for the new home, and
  • any other expenses that you pay on a regular basis (i.e. gas for your car, groceries, Netflix, etc.).
You don’t want to assume what you can afford for a mortgage.  You want to be 100% sure.  It would suck to buy a home and realize later you can barely make ends meet because you didn’t take all your expenses into consideration beforehand.

Once you evaluate your budget and start to look at houses, you might realize that your must-haves don’t fit into your budget.  This is when you have to be honest with yourself and re-evaluate your list of must-haves.

4. Spend Less Than The Bank Approves You For

If I remember correctly back in 2013 we were approved for $300K+ for a 30-year mortgage.  We didn’t have any business with a $300K mortgage.  The mortgage company isn’t considering your future financial plans or obligations when they approve you for a mortgage amount.  They don’t consider that you plan on having children and may need to pay for childcare.  They aren’t considering that you need to invest for college for your kids or that you need to invest for your future or even that you want to pay it off before the mortgage term.  You have to think about your future and the life you want for yourself, and then dictate what mortgage fits into that plan.  You don’t want to be house poor.

side note – You also want to make sure you have a good realtor.  You don’t want someone who is pushy and just trying to close the deal on the most expensive house that you are approved for.

When we had discussions about how much of a mortgage we wanted one of the most important items we discussed was how we would continue to pay the mortgage in situations where one of us couldn’t earn an income.  Basically, we wanted a mortgage, that in emergencies, one income could support.  We paid a little more than half of what the mortgage company approved.  Little did we know that that decision would allow Kim to virtually be a stay at home mom.  Also, since our mortgage is so low compared to what we were approved for,  it makes the idea of paying it off a little easier to wrap our minds around.

9 Helpful Tips You Need To Know When Buying A Home

5. Include Investing Goals When Setting Your Budget

Baby Step 4 of Dave Ramsey’s plan is to invest 15% of your income for retirement.  When we got our mortgage this baby step wasn’t even on our radar.  To be honest, looking back, I’m not even sure why we didn’t think about it.  It might have been because we had a little bit of debt at the time, and we weren’t fully committed to the baby steps.  Once we were out of debt and looking at baby step 4 we realized that getting to the 15% was going to be more difficult than we thought.  That’s when we realized that this would have been a good conversation to have while we were going through the house buying process.  This is tough.  It’s tough because it may affect the amount of house you can buy.  It’s hard to sacrifice your today for 20 or 30 or even 40 years in the future.  The truth is that the 15% that you invest over that time period is going to be what provides for you when you don’t want to work or physically can’t work anymore.  It’s just as important as the house you are buying today.

  • read: Is Investing Really That Hard?

6. Get A 15-Year-Mortgage

This is another one we got wrong.  We went with the 30-year mortgage.  Our thought was that if we got into an emergency having a smaller mortgage would help to ease the pain.  Also, we promised ourselves that we would pay extra on the mortgage…eventually.  Welp, in the 2 1/2 years we had that mortgage we never paid extra on it once, and we only paid off $6K in principal.  We refinanced to a 15-year mortgage at the beginning of 2016 and paid off $6K in principal in about 8 months.  If you compare the total costs of a 15-year and 30-year mortgage you end up paying a lot more interest on the 30-year mortgage. We originally justified getting the 30-year mortgage to help with emergencies, but you can offset this simply by building your emergency fund to more than 6 months.  It doesn’t make sense to pay all that additional interest to help with emergencies when you can build up your emergency fund to offset the risk.  And yes, you won’t be able to get as much house with a 15-year mortgage.  In response, I asked myself these questions: “What do you want more – to get to financial freedom sooner or a bigger house?”

  • read: Mortgage Term: 15 Or 30 Years A Slave?

7. Visit The Neighborhood At Different Times Of Day

Once the offer was accepted on our house it was becoming more and more real that we might actually be living in that neighborhood.  With us being first time home buyers we were very excited but nervous as well about making the right decision.  One thing we did to try to put our minds at ease was to visit the neighborhood several times during our due diligence period.  We had already visited the neighborhood during the day with our realtor.  We also decided it was best to visit the neighborhood in the evening (closer to night time) and on the weekend because this is when most people are home.  This way we could get a better feel for the neighborhood and somewhat the people in the neighborhood.

8. Set Aside Extra Money

When we bought our home there were a ton of things that we knew we wanted to do.  Some were needs to us and some were definitely wants.  For example, Kim hated the idea of using the toilets that were in our home.  They were dingy and ugly, to say the least.  After replacing them we found out that they were actually refurbished toilets.  We made sure we had some cash in addition to our down payment and emergency fund so we could replace those toilets amongst other things.

Having that extra cushion to make your new house feel more like home is definitely worth it.

  • read: Why An Emergency Fund Is A Must-Have

9. Don’t Feel The Need To Do Everything Right Away

We get it.  You bought a new home and feel the need to make it “yours” right away.  However, we’re here to tell you that you don’t have to do everything at once.  It’s ok to take your time.  Sometimes it’s even better to live in a space for awhile to see exactly what it is that you want and what it is that you like.  For example, we didn’t buy all new furniture right away once we moved into our house.  For one, it wasn’t in the budget, and we had some perfectly good hand me downs.  When we did talk about the furniture we discussed getting a sectional in the living room.  After living in our space we have come to realize that we don’t want a sectional in our living room.  A sectional will appear too big in our space and cut off one of our walkways that we like to use.  If we had bought a sectional right away or shortly after moving in, then we would’ve been stuck with it until it was no good anymore!

I recommend making a list of the things that you feel the need to do right away vs the things that can be done later on.  And once again remember to be flexible and mindful of your budget as you might have to reevaluate your list.  When we were waiting to close on our house we made our list of everything that needed to be done.  Some things took precedence over others.  For instance, we had to remove some wood alongside the house that was rotting and attracting termites.  And then we had to put down sod.  This took quite a bit of time and work, but Omar was adamant that it had to be done because we didn’t want termite problems.  However, I wasn’t exactly thrilled that I had to wait another week or two to get blinds just because we didn’t have the time to work on it nor did we have all of the money to purchase the blinds.  In the end, it all worked out though because we weren’t living in the house at this point anyways.

Hopefully, these tips have been and will be helpful.  If you are starting your house buying journey, do you plan to use any of these tips? If you have already bought your house, did you use these tips or similar tips? Did you make any mistakes along the way? What were they and were you able to fix them? 

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Filed Under: Life + Home Tagged With: home tips

See what’s happening on Instagram…

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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Comments

  1. Jennifer Burel says

    March 6, 2017 at 10:42 pm

    Great post! My favorite, of course, is number 7! Gotta check out those neighbors! You guys are the best and we love having you in our neighborhood.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:22 pm

      Thanks Jenn! Omar and I said that if you guys ever move then you have to make sure that the house next door to you is for sale as well because we will be moving too! Lol.

    • Omar says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:36 pm

      Likewise Jenn!!

  2. Chad Belinfanti says

    March 6, 2017 at 11:15 pm

    For number 1 does having kids impact the priority of location /school/etc? Great post, lots of good info.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:27 pm

      I would say that it’s in the top 2. Staying within your budget would be number one for me. At the time that we bought our house, we didn’t even have a child yet, but we still researched the schools in the area. Also, sometimes when people relocate in regards to their kids it’s usually because they want a better school system. So it should definitely be at the top of your priority list.

    • Omar says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:48 pm

      I definitely agree with Kim here! No surprise there I’m sure! 🙂 Get your kids in the best school possible while keeping your other financial goals in mind as well.

  3. Yvonne says

    March 7, 2017 at 8:24 am

    Great post! So many helpful tips that we could have used when we came to Georgia over 30 years ago. For sure, we could have saved ourselves some bumps and bruises.

    • Kim says

      March 7, 2017 at 8:30 pm

      Thanks! If you ever move again then you can utilize the tips that we offered. 😉

  4. Merchell says

    March 8, 2017 at 2:43 pm

    Thanks for the information you shared. I am sure it will help many of your readers. Would have changed my life 30 years ago but is still meaningful today. Great job.

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See what’s happening on Instagram

thinkingofsomeday

No long caption. I just wanted to make our last “mortgage principal payoff” calendar update. 😆 It’s been a month and it still feels surreal to us...
On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bed On Christmas Eve morning, Omar left out of the bedroom saying that he had to go work on something. When he came back he handed me a letter that said:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“As I sit here on the edge of paying our home off I understand that it isn’t completely about us. Our job is to set the next generation up to do better than us, which makes me think of the generation before me. This final payment would not be possible without [Kim’s dad]. He spent his life working for this money and passed away before he got to use it for himself. We agreed to use that money in a way that would always honor him. So for the past 6 years it has funded our oldest son’s 529 [via the minimum required distribution]. Today, that money has grown enough to pay off our mortgage without touching the initial principal. Today we sever ties to debt forever. Today, we say thank you to [Kim’s dad] for the sacrifices he made and the foundation he laid that made it possible. THANK YOU!!”
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Of course after l finished reading the letter I was like... 🥺😭. Truth be told, I still kind of feel that way. It’s part of why it took so long to share the details of paying off our mortgage. Losing a parent is hard.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Pictured is my dad and I... my favorite picture of of us. He passed away 6 years ago on NYE. He was only 62. After he passed, I found out I was “entitled” to receive part of his pension. Omar and I decided to use some of this money to pay off our mortgage. This is how we were able to pay off most of our $54k balance 7 days into this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This is the short version, but if you want the full details, we wrote a blog post sharing:
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• a recap of our initial mortgage payoff plan + payoff journey
• some background info about the pension + how we almost cashed it out when we first found out about it
• the breakdown of the $$ that it took to make this happen + why we did it this way
• how some things didn’t go as planned
• and each of our thoughts in regards to all of this
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can find the link in our bio.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“In all that I do, I strive to make my parents proud. I like to think my dad would be damn proud of me... of us, for this one.” Kim #piecesofsomeday
#tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mo #tbt To last Thursday (1/7/2021) when we became mortgage free!! Yes, you read that correctly! We are 100% debt free! Like debt free, debt free. 🤣
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
To be honest, it’s been a week and it still doesn’t feel real to us yet. But it was real watching that money disappear from our account and no longer seeing our mortgage balance when we signed into our credit union account. We must say, our credit union works pretty fast! Lol.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We didn’t even get around to sharing our mortgage payoff goal for the year with one of the little cute pictures explaining how we were going to do it. But here’s a quick recap of the numbers that we were working with...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• mortgage principal: $54,507.37
• mortgage interest: $35.84
• reconveyance fee: $69.00
• paying off our mortgage... definitely not priceless, but oh so worth it!! 😂🙌🏽
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’ll share more in depth details soon because you’re probably wondering how we came up with that amount of money 7 days into January. It definitely wasn’t from hitting the lottery! Lol. But until then, just know that...
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
WE’RE MORTGAGE FREE!!! #piecesofsomeday
So we took some Christmas / family pictures back i So we took some Christmas / family pictures back in 2020 (as if that was so long ago), but I never got to share them. 😩 So here’s one. I actually like the fact that it’s in front of our house. #piecesofsomeday
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
And I also wanted to add that we finally did another blog post after quite some time. Maybe we’re the world’s worst bloggers. 🤷🏽‍♀️🤷🏽‍♂️ But if you’re interested, we’re sharing a recap of quarter 3 and quarter 4 from our mortgage payoff journey. We’re also sharing what our mortgage payoff goal is for 2021. We’re a bit excited about it! You can check it out at the link in our bio.
2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of 2020. This has been a year that I’m sure none of us will ever forget. While this year has been ok for us for the most part, there are many people that it’s been a really really tough year for. Whether it’s been financially, emotionally, health wise, etc. etc. etc. So here’s to hoping that next year will be much much better, for everyone, but especially for those who had a tough time this year. ✨♥️
We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house a We started 2020 off with owning 43% of our house and we now own 69% of it. We had paid off 39% of the mortgage loan and we’re finishing the year out at having 66% of it paid off. (These 2 numbers are not the same for us because of our 5% down payment as well as when we refinanced to a 15-year mortgage.) It’s been really exciting to see these numbers increase this year.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
(Annnnnd this concludes our December numbers. I can’t believe I managed to share them all before the end of the year!! 😂)
Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the Q4 was our best quarter by far, mostly due to the RSUs that we were able to use. However, even if we hadn’t been able to use them, Q4 would have still wrapped up nicely thanks to us still being able to stick to our 70/30 plan.
For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles For December we were able to color in 4 rectangles. This puts our mortgage balance for the end of 2020 at $54,507.37.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
• 132 rectangles total
• 88 rectangles colored in
• 44 rectangles to go!!
The total of our mortgage principal payments for D The total of our mortgage principal payments for December was $3514.74.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
$995.13 came from our regular payment and $2519.61 came from our budget.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
This put us at meeting our second stretch goal of putting a total of $45,000 towards our mortgage principal for the year! Yes, we did a little magic with our budget in order to get it at exactly $45k, but I’m sure that’s what we all do in when we’re trying to hit a certain number!! Haha.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We’re soooo happy that we were able to meet this goal because we really weren’t sure if it was going to be possible or not!
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