Avoid mistakes when buying a home involves more than your home inspection report. I just read an article that was a surprise to me from CNBC. It spoke about regrets millennials have about their home purchase. When I call my buyers months and years later, they almost always tell me how happy they are with the house.
I do have 1 exception which happened recently. However that had to do with a relationship breakup. Don’t buy a house thinking it will save your marriage. It won’t. Let’s look at the top reasons in the article from CNBC.
Closing Costs
If you bought a house from me, you know I made sure you knew about closing costs. You were told to go over this carefully with the banker and your attorney. You’ll also remember that I added in the cost of a home inspection, tank sweep and spoke about possible additional inspections your home inspector might suggest. We also discussed the need for a survey, title insurance, homeowner insurance and perhaps a home warranty. By the time we found a house, you had an excellent idea of what to expect. 
The CNBC article pointed out to me that a good number of millennial home buyers simply never got this information at all or completely. Because closing costs come to thousands of dollars on top of the price of a home, make sure you get this information down to the penny. Frankly if anyone you are dealing with isn’t doing this for you, fire them and get someone who has your interests at heart.
Ownership Costs
Can anyone explain to me why their so-called professionals in buying a home forget to tell you about what it costs to actually own a home? This is SO frustrating to me.
Do your best to get an idea of utility costs. Very unfortunately this has become more difficult due to privacy concerns. Up until the very recent past I could get a budget plan for gas and electric and some notion of what water would run. However, try your best to get an idea. Heat, cooling and water are all things you need and they’re not free.
Also, how about being told to budget for lawn maintenance, snow removal, gutter cleaning? Because this is important you should figure it too. If I can get this from the current owner in occupied homes, that’s great. Because everyone lives in a home differently, I caution my buyers accordingly.
For example, if the owner is 85 then the heat is really high so take that into consideration. If the owner works in NYC and has a programmable thermostat, then heating bills will be higher if you work from home. You really won’t know until you live there but there should be no major surprises.
The Home Itself
The article spoke about the house itself – it’s size and location – and why it’s important to see the house yourself. While I love technology, anyone who buys a house strictly through the web is making a HUGE mistake.
No matter how good VR becomes, a house is a home. It’s not now and never will be just a structure. It’s a home, it’s your living environment. It that wasn’t important, you wouldn’t worry about what color to paint a room, where to place that sofa etc. Homes are emotional purchases. It’s where you live your life.
Again, if you bought a home from me you will remember me pointing out that you can hear the street noise – is that ok? or telling you to come back at rush hour on Monday because everything is quiet on an open house Sunday afternoon. You should drive around the neighborhood too because you don’t want to be surprised when they turn on the lights behind your house for that Little League evening baseball game.
Spend Time to be Prepared
In my initial conversation with my clients, I always ask them to spend a little extra time with me to get prepared. If you go to the buyers section of my website you’ll see that it’s basically a mini course on how to do this right. I want you to be fully prepared because that’s how you do the best for yourself.
It is very unfortunate that a large number of millennial buyers regret their home purchase. All I can tell you is that my customers are happy with their homes. The reason they are is simple – they agreed to spend a little extra time with me to get fully prepared. You can avoid mistakes when buying a home. If you want to know more or have any other questions, just text or call me at 201-741-8490.
