Home Question for homeowners

[Haven]

I Love My Sailor--I love your home! It''s so adorable. I would have inquired about it too if I saw it sitting there with a For Sale sign out front.

I also want to second (or third?) Sparkly Blonde''s and HVVS''s advice. It is so important to factor in home maintenance and repair costs when you''re house hunting.

We don''t have a huge lot, it''s 70'' x 140'', and we spend a lot of money on landscaping every year. We spent around $150 just on leaf disposal alone in the fall! (That was the cost of the bags themselves, which are around $3 each. We do all of our landscaping ourselves.)

We decided to buy a home that we could afford on the lesser of our two salaries alone. It was the best decision we ever made because I was able to quit my job after a year of living in our house, and we didn''t have to worry about paying our mortgage or keeping up with everything. It can be so tempting to buy *just* a bit more house, but keeping the payments manageable is so important. We only have 1480 sq ft of living space, yet we''ve managed to spend thousands on updating and maintaining the house. I''m so glad we bought well within our budget.

 

[sbde]

we looked at a little over 100 house. and i can attest to that because i kept notes on the pros/cons of each house in a spreadsheet!

in the end we picked the one we did because it was new and under construction in an established neighbourhood - essentially we were able to customize all of our finishes according to our tastes and were not going to be living in a dusty workzone because all of the other houses on the street had been around for 10+ yrs.

it was the only house we put an offer on.

good luck with your search!