Buying a place to live can be stressful, especially if it's your first time. Whether it's finding proper insurance, getting much-needed maintenance done, or planning for future upgrades, there are so many unknowns and things to worry about.
To figure out the biggest and most common complaints about the whole process, Reddit user Californiabred made a post on the platform, asking: "Homeowners who bought recently, what's your biggest regret?" Immediately, people from all over the world started sending in their answers.
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Not recent, but I still regret not refinishing the floors before I moved in. I'll never do it now.
A survey of 2,000 recent homebuyers – 44% of whom purchased their current property in 2021 and 56% of whom bought in 2022 – might help us to put these stories into context.
The most common repairs these people had to get were related to plumbing (35%), HVAC (34%), and electrical wiring (33%) issues. Luckily, when asked if they feel prepared to take on unexpected home repair costs up to $1,000, approximately four in five (81%) respondents answered yes, while just 19% said no.
Bought about 3 years ago.
Biggest regret was rushing to buy Furniture.
Wish I took my time and bought pieces when I could afford something nice.
Now I have s****y couches I despise.
Facebook Marketplace. Sell the old one and buy what you want. Also, if you have an ikea sofa or chair, you can buy covers in better quality fabrics. I did that with a chair that converts into a bed.
Still, buying a home is one of the biggest investments most people make, so it's no wonder that many new homeowners report feeling stressed at some point.
In fact, 83% of those surveyed have experienced homeowner anxiety, and 69% also admitted that they've had buyer's remorse, while 33% revealed they experience such feelings regularly.
Hiring the wrong home inspector they missed so much,I really have to wonder if all those reviews were bought and paid for.
I really searched for a good one. One inspection had already been made, but I wanted my own. First inspection only showed minor issues.Mine showed critical issues causing the buy to be anulled, and when put back to market as "piece of land, house needs to be torn down".
Not knowing enough about the area/town.
I hate where we live ☹️ hoping we can move by the time my oldest starts kindergarten
Best advice I got is to first rent in the area you plan to buy.
Even if they feel financially stable after purchasing a home, many new owners say they are worried about the safety and security of their property:
- 59% worry about home break-ins;
- 52% worry about home fires;
- 49% worry about home flooding;
- 37% worry about earthquake damage.
So I guess the added freedom of having your own place comes with new worries in one form or the other.
Not planting the fruit trees sooner. It’s a long wait :)
My house came with a massive apricot tree, a mandarin and a nectarine. All fruited brilliantly. Fifteen years later and the apricot fell down after the big wet and took out the others leaving me with nothing. I haven't had the heart yet to replant. 😢 (On the upside, missed the house by only a gnats whisker)
Be shameless enough to perform your own base level of inspection of a house so you don’t have to rely on what an inspector finds or get in a situation where you have to make an offer regardless of what the inspection finds.
Turn all the faucets on and run the dishwasher. Start the washer machine for a second. Figure out if there is any water pressure issue.
Bring a multi line laser and a tape measure. Check for any significant changes in slope on the foundation for some settling issues.
Pay attention to the downspouts. Do they terminate right at the house or do they have longer pipes that lead the water away?
Pay attention to the flooring and create a rough estimate of what it will cost to immediately replace the flooring. Way easier to do when you don’t have a house full of furniture and can do it right before you move in.
On the financial side you need to talk with multiple lenders at all times and make sure they continue to give you the most up to date closing costs. There were a lot of sneaky numbers that made there way in that I was unaware of as a first time home buyer.
Until that mortgage lender gives you the locked in rate don’t trust them as to what number they are currently telling you.
Discover your maximum mortgage rate + escrow and work backwards as to the maximum house you can afford. Don’t buy based on the pipe dream of refinancing.
Let someone who is not biased by " oh my gosh I want that house" take a look. When friends found a house to buy they showed it to me and I was like " no way". There were sloped ceilings, a weird scent of the former dogs peeing everywhere, a broken basement window, noisy neighbours with barking Terriers, too few outlets where the washing machine belonged, and a dozen other issues. They found a lot of fixable stuff before but were blinded by love to the idea of the house. They did not buy it.
I’m in awe of anybody that was recently able to buy a house.
Same, I can't believe all the complaining. All I want is to be able to own a house .
I regret not having the inside painted and the carpet replaced before we moved in. Been here two years and it never felt like “my home” until I got rid of the stains of those who came before.
Not doing a walk through before closing and not having the sellers fix the electric before I signed the contract. My two biggest regrets.
Hurry is a realtor's best friend. We discovered that we had 3 months to find and buy a house, or we would lose the opportunity to finance through the VA. Of course we made huge mistakes. Of course we were lied to about such trifles as what school district the house was in. Of course we have had to do major auto maintenance in a sloping driveway, and the wiring is downright scary.
I have no regrets. Buying property is never a bad idea unless you can't afford the monthly payment. It beats paying rent that increases every year and you get nothing in return for it. You can always refinance, but you can never change the purchase price, so you win some you lose some at either end of things.
I guess I wish I had more money to hire people to fix things so I didn't have to do it myself. But that's just how it is sometimes.
Buying and then four months later getting divorced.
I bought a few years ago. So many things have gone sideways. One thing I regret is not being educated about permits. Contractors/handymen/ anyone who works on your house really, never mentions a permit may be needed.
Learned that it’s up to me and me alone to do the research and phone calls. Currently have a job on hold because they needed a permit. The company blamed me and now I’m not sure they’re even going to do the work.
Watch the movie The Money Pit. It’s not that far off. Some days I wish I’d just be a renter.
The inspector told us the main drain in the basement was clogged. We thought it was clogged with something normal. It was, in fact, "clogged" with cement from when our basement floor was redone. So now our basement regularly gets standing water on one side.
The situation when you bought a house where it was possible and a month later they sell a house in the area where you wanted
I'm not sure of OPs situation, but I'd be curious why they didn't wait in the first place.
I should have bought a smaller house with money left to renovate instead of a larger one with nothing left over. There are so many weird quirks with this place that I would love to change but I’ll probably have to wait 10 years. I’m doing all the changes that I can do myself but there’s just so many to do and some are way outside my knowledge base.
I sat on my a*s for too long and missed out on the lower price and incredible interest. The house I bought for 465k was 350k in 2019.
I bought a lemon of a house. Turned out that it needed new wiring, plumbing, and structural support. The inspector (friends with the real estate agent I found out) didn't have any concerns about the house.
I ended up short selling it for a $15,000 loss.
I wouldn't say we have any regrets. Was everything ideal? No. We had to buy in a neighborhood that we're not excited about and obviously prices and interest rates are what they are. But it's hard to say I regret that because we bought when we could. I can't really regret having not done it sooner because... we couldn't have. And we got most of what we wanted in terms of space.
So, none, I guess.
I absolutely LOVE my new house.... However, somebody just built a HUGE McMansion not far and they can see into my entire backyard from their back porch. I knew there was a new subdivision going in next door, but didn't realize how close the houses would be to mine or that they would block my mountain view.
Sounds like my area! Most houses that are 20+ years old were built to have a great view of the mountains, and then the McMansions come in and block all the views (and they're all just BIG - big cars, big houses, big families, just big)
Not learning more about home maintenance before buying and moving in. Nothing major has happened thankfully but after a few years I've realized how little I actually know about taking care of a house and how it's affecting my utilities and comfort. Not to a degree where I regret buying the house, but if I could go back and do it all again I'd take care of some things sooner/differently and would probably have better results.
I should have gone down to the city office and asked to pull all of the permits for the house for the prior 5 years and done a better job of investigating if there were any known permit violations. It turns out that there were a few from a feud with a neighbor where they were each calling the city to report anything and everything that was a problem. The seller did not disclose this, which is fraud and absolutely makes them liable. However, it's also a situation where I can resolve the permit issues for about $3,000, or I can fight them in court for ten times that with absolutely no hope that I would ever be able to recover the money. I've bought and sold homes before and never had this issue. Live, learn, and chalk it up to $3k in tuition to the school of hard knocks.
That I didn’t borrow a bit extra to have a buffer for things like house repairs and rates. We literally borrowed the minimum we needed for the house and put every cent of savings into it. I’m definitely regretting doing that, now with cost of living and rate rises we no longer have the ability to save anything significant by the end of each month so any repairs and extras are going to take forever to save for
I was very fortunate. My mum paid for my house outright (she had just sold hers and had leftover) and I just repay her monthly, as if it's rent/mortgage. At the same time, my grandad had died the year before and I received some money from his estate, which will hopefully stretch far enough for all the work I need done.
Buying a house we weren’t super psyched about but we needed a house due to moving for a job.
I have done that renting. Moved for a job, got the best apartment I could find at the time. The landlord sucked donkey balls, never did repairs. Not even when the bathroom ceiling fell in cuz of a leak in the upstairs apartment.
Not particularly recent, but we did not pull out cars in the driveway or attempt to park them. So we didn't realize that my car could only enter the driveway from one direction, so I had to turn around half a block up every time I needed to park. And we just BARELY got two cars in the driveway.
So my regret is that I took for granted that the driveway met our needs.
Interest rates
Interest rates in Australia have gone up 13 times in just 15 months, since 2022.
Not looking in the attic, they built a new roof over the old one.
Gonna make remodeling hard.
After we moved in, we looked at a wall in a basement room and wondered "Why is that wall painted black?" It wasn't paint.
Buying in an area where my house is the most expensive one.
Everyone else's prices are driving mine down. It's making it harder to sell for what it's worth.
You never want to be the mansion in a trailer park or the trailer in the country club. --Papaw
Getting a homestead exemption the month we moved in.
I’ll ask all the newbie questions: 1. What is a homestead exemption? 2. Is getting one bad, or is not getting one bad? 3. Why?
Not making it secure enough earlier.
They won't regret anything other than the higher monthly payment due to interest rates unless the market crashes.
My current neighbor bought just before the 2008 crash and it took them until 2020 for their home value to get back to what they paid.
Wow. We bought in fall 2007, knowing prices were a bit inflated and likely about to fall. But the value was up to what we paid for it within 5-6yrs, and as of 2023 is DOUBLE what we paid for it. We thought we were painted into a corner when we bought, but really, current home prices just are not fair for new home buyers.
I bought awhile back. But if I spent $100 to $150k more I could have bought a much better house and would be $1 million more now.
Recently meaning what? I purchased 5 years ago; however, the recent property valuation was an absolute crock-of-s**t that doubled my tax-burden. NOW my monthly payment is about 30% higher than it was before and I can BARELY make it every month...but in my market, it's still SLIGHTLY cheaper than renting an apartment.
I live in a region where tourists love to buy second homes for crazy prices - which means the tax-value of the homes of the local people get crazy high, too, without anything of actual value added. I called the tax inspectors to come along to see themselves that my old house is just an old house and no fancy holiday home. Sometimes it works.
Bought at the peeeeeeeak
Not too recently (3 years ago) but I regret buying my parents house. Everything needs to be replaced now. We replaced very expensive custom windows and found that the frames were all rotted and we had to redo a ton of stucco. That was the tip of the iceberg we have yet to tackle. It was a no-brainer for the price and equity but now we’re stuck with how s****y the market is and all the things we need to fix in order to sell.
In our wills, the house goes to the kids. The names on the deed has already been changed and we have a life rent, so we can't sell the house from underneath them and they can't evict us. If they already have houses and want to sell, they split the money in half. If one wants the house, she'll have to buy the other out. We learned a lot about planning for future elderly situations dealing with my husband's parents (one passed away in a care home and one still in care and it's eating up their savings at an alarming rate).
Not buying sooner before the interest rates jumped so fast. When we put the offer in on our house in April 2022, the rate was 3.2%. By the time we closed in June 2022, we closed at 5.25%.
EDIT: Correcting myself here, we started looking in March 2022 and the rates then were around 3.2-3.5%. By the time we locked our rate in with all the paperwork, it was up to 5.125%. We closed with 3 days to spare on the rate lock because the owners were being annoying with the closing date.
I bought my first house early 80's (UK). The highest interest rate was 18%, but we thankfully got a cheap mortgage at 15%. And you say the boomers had it easy? We were vegetarian for 2 years as we could hardly afford meat.
Bought literally last week. Wish i had more bathrooms but its fine. I plan on building one in basement.
I’m curious to know how many you have and want? I am of the (rare and getting rarer) opinion that a house with two bathrooms is luxury and a house with more than two is a hotel.
One thing people will never admit they regret is buying something with too much space. They never realize the amount of time it will take to keep it clean and how much money they will waste filling up all the empty space. Not to mention what the utilities will end up being. Most people would probably kill to py what i do a month for electric
Reminds me of a Chevy Chase movie where he paid his neighbours (who he didn't like) to make the town as friendly and cosy in order to sell his home. Didn't go well.
We pay 6k in rent. Would be around 10k too buy house of same size. We are in one of the few small towns where renting is cheaper than owning. I also think buying ties you too one place. Better job elsewhere? Gotta sell my house first. Which can take months considering costs etc.
One thing people will never admit they regret is buying something with too much space. They never realize the amount of time it will take to keep it clean and how much money they will waste filling up all the empty space. Not to mention what the utilities will end up being. Most people would probably kill to py what i do a month for electric
Reminds me of a Chevy Chase movie where he paid his neighbours (who he didn't like) to make the town as friendly and cosy in order to sell his home. Didn't go well.
We pay 6k in rent. Would be around 10k too buy house of same size. We are in one of the few small towns where renting is cheaper than owning. I also think buying ties you too one place. Better job elsewhere? Gotta sell my house first. Which can take months considering costs etc.
