First time home buyer regrets?

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No regrets. Glad I purchased my starter home on the onset of pandemic when rates were low and right before prices went crazy. I probably couldn’t have afforded it if I waited for another 2 or 3 months.

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I’m thankful I bought what I did, when I did. Interest rates are nearly double what I locked in. Bought a larger home too that was move-in ready but had some cosmetic issues. Been working on them since purchasing and feel proud of the progress.

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Regret not buying more properties.

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I've never bought a house but I was thinking about my parents home value since they just recently sold. Bought at $250k in 1991 and sold at $550k in 2022. After taking into account general maintenance and other costs they almost certainly lost out vs renting.

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Can go around and around on assumptions but the take aways are (1) you’re generally best served putting as little equity into your home as possible assuming you put the rest into other investments (although that’s colored by the interest rate environment of the last 10+ years) and (2) a mid 2% cagr over 30 years on a real estate asset is poor. Houses and markets aren’t created equal - the calculus changes if you’re buying in stagnant geos or if you’re buying or building something wildly better than the immediate town / neighborhood. Always better to buy the cheapest ugliest house on a premier block than vice versa.

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I bought my first property (a city condo) in 2008 and then prices plummeted. It took 12 years for prices to recover. So my regret was buying in the height of the bubble.

I’ve almost paid that house off now and bought a second property two years ago in a better market. No regrets there.

Saving for a down payment on a third property now and looking for something oversees in my motherland of England. I want a prior townhome that I can decorate with antique furniture. My regret is not doing this sooner as the prices as so high. Im going to keep saving and hope for a market slump before buying.

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Got it, thank you.

Regret didn’t buy more expensive house.

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I would caution putting much faith in zestimates / et all even in crazy markets. While some may be accurate, my biggest complaint is that they typically retroactively adjust their price estimate histories after things transact to give the impression of better accuracy. Condo we bought three years ago we paid 300-400k under what all the online estimates were at, the estimates quickly snapped back up after our purchase, then we ended up selling it for a little more than we paid for it 2 years later. Home we’re in now we got for 500k under what the estimates all had it, and now 6 months later all the estimates are way back up.

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Not getting a house with a bigger garage

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Absolutely love our home. We actually somehow managed to get the first house we bid on, which is absolutely unheard of in our city. We went with a move in ready semi that’s modern but still kept a few craftsmen details like stained glass windows. It’s in a beautiful little residential neighbourhood a 5 minute walk from the subway. The only major regret I have on the home itself is not getting a place with a larger basement. It’s definitely useable for us, but it’s only 6ft high ceilings. We’ll have to underpin it one day.

And the only regret I have on the buying financial side was I wish we knew how stressful getting a mortgage was when one party is self employed. Everyone said it would be easy with the amount of money we make. We went well below our preapproved mortgage amount of 2.5, and it was still scary waiting for approval and providing extra info to support. The market here is so nuts there are absolutely no conditions so if we didn’t end up getting the mortgage we’d be out a hefty down payment.

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I regret not buying earlier. Past 5 years have been great for housing. I bought a couple of houses, one primary and one investment, both went up by 200k each. The area is developing and more new constructions are coming along with new grocery stores and restaurants. I am now saving up to move closer to the city.

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Regret not buying an investment property when the rates were lower in 2020.

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Not spending enough money on upgrades offered on our new construction garden condo. We spent 5K but looking back we should have spent another 10K to get upgraded hardwood floors, upgraded kitchen appliances along few other things

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We got engineered hardwood as a standard option, we should have upgraded to real hardwood. Kitchen hood was an upgrade which we should have gotten instead of the small exhaust in microwave. Anyways we have learnt our lessons for the future. We should have got top of the line toilet bowl instead of standard which ain’t that great

No; made a million in our first buy and sale (it’s not that much in the Bay Area). We do have tax regrets though 😂

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I sold in the same area. Taxes made me want to cry 😢.

I want to own a house. Dont know where to start

I’d add to Manybrain1’s comment on the budget by also figuring out what money you’ll need to spend shortly after closing, and subtracting that amount from your projected down payment amount. For example, getting the place repainted, hiring movers, or buying new furniture, can cost a few thousand dollars.

Bought too small then when we outgrew it we sold it. Keep buying and holding (and renting out the old ones).

My fear is buying some too small and then having to go through the process again when family gets bigger.

I feel like we should get something in the “financial stretch” range first (where we watch eating out, vacations) and then grow into it financially through raises / promotions. It should be noted that this stretch period is considered as if my wife isn’t working. If she is (and she does) then 100% of her income should go to savings

Being naive and buying something that required significant work + in an HOA + in a historical preservation district with multiple levels of administrative review for projects like we wanted to do. Ultimately bailed and moved to something move in ready in the burbs when the full project estimates all came back with extra commas in them and the HOA tried to legally restrict us from having work done during COVID

TLDR - be very careful buying a fixer upper - everything will cost 3-5x and take at least 3x as long as what you expect it to if you’re an hgtv fan. Also avoid HOAs

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I was nervous when we bought in 2018... I was afraid we overpaid, but we fortunately bought preboom... our housing market is on fire (Tampa) and the house is worth about 110k more than we paid for it. (For now muwahahaha).

Look back at 2006.... don't buy in the bubble!

Mines got a lot of street noise, city condo… but can install soundproof windows… other than that no regrets

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