So you wanna buy a house.......

So you want to buy a house?! Congrats!! Here are some of my suggestions before you start looking.

1. Determine what you can spend.

There is no point in falling in love with something that you can't afford.

It would be like finding 'the wedding dress' and then checking the price tag. Don't do it. I recommend taking a hard look at your finances to figure out what your budget is, you won't be able to enjoy your house if you are stressed about making the payment.

2. How long will you be there?

When we starting searching we knew that we wanted a house that we could start a family in, we were thinking about 4 bedrooms but would consider 3 bedrooms also. At the time we were thinking we would live in our home about 7-10 years, now that we have so much blood sweat and tears into the place I plan on dying here.

3. Location, Location, Location

Growing up I had always pictured myself a city girl. Bright lights, busy streets, great social life.......then I remembered I don't like people. But we aren't the boon-dock types either, driving 20 minutes to buy groceries? No thank you. So we looked for a house in the middle, not down town where all the houses are two feet apart but not in the middle of nowhere with no neighbors in sight for miles. Also you will want to consider schools, even if you don't have kids now, you could sometime (yes, even if you aren't planning, condoms do break)

4. Must have list

Your must list should be realistic. I'm saying you shouldn't have big dreams about your new home, but you might want to separate your list into 'must-have' and 'would be nice to have'. A couple of our must haves where a decent sized yard and 3-4 bedrooms, which we ended up with.

Our would-be-nice-to-have was a garage and fenced in yard, neither of which we got.

5. Compromise 

Oh compromise, the story of adulthood, which is totally overrated.

If you have already started house hunting I'm sure that you have found that the dream house that you had in your head is either our of your budget or just doesn't exist. Unless you can build your own house you are most likely not going to get everything you want in a house. You just have to figure out what you are willing to compromise on, can you put up with an out dated kitchen if it means have a garage? Decisions, decisions.