Home Ownership: Three things I've learned

Yes, we’re moving!

After five years in our roughly 1,200 sq. ft. house, we’re ready for a little more space. I’ll share more about where we’re going and how it happened in a future post, but first I wanted to talk about some of the things we’ve learned over the past five years of home ownership. We got some important things right, but there are also some things we plan to do differently the second time around.

1. A house isn’t a great investment.

Obviously I can only speak to the housing market in Halifax, which has changed a lot since we bought our house. We bought when prices were high, and there was a sense that interest rates might go up any day. Now interest rates are even lower than when we bought, and many buyers are waiting to see how low prices will go. It’s a buyer’s market. The homes that are selling are not only priced right, they’re move-in ready. We made sure that our house met both of these criteria when we listed, and we feel extremely lucky that we were able to sell as quickly as we did (especially in winter). We accepted an offer after less than a week on the market, and although it ultimately fell through (whomp, whomp), we happily accepted another (higher) offer a few weeks later. I think we’ll recover the money we invested in the house (minus our labour), but it’s not exactly the ROI we envisioned when we bought the house (ha, we were so naive!).

Through this experience, I’ve learned that a lot of factors affect your ROI when it comes to selling your house, and many of them are outside your control. Maybe we would be in the same place financially if we had saved our money and continued renting for the past five years. Or maybe not. Of course, we definitely wouldn’t have the DIY skills and knowledge we’ve developed over the past five years, or the same understanding of what we really want and need in a home (for example, it turns out we’re deck/patio people, not yard people). The thing is, I never loved our current house; I viewed it as an investment that would eventually allow us to buy a house we love. I would never approach buying a house as an investment again.

We love our new house. It needs a ton of work (more on that later), but the size is right, we love the neighbourhood, and the house has everything – or at least the potential for everything – we’re looking for in a home. Are we making a good investment? I hope so, but that’s secondary to it being a house we’re excited to call home.

2. Buy less house than you can afford.

One of the things we did get right was buying a lot less house than we could afford. That meant our house needed a lot of work when we bought it, but we were young and full of energy, and I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed the process of fixing it up over the past 5 years. Buying less house than we could afford allowed us to pay for improvements as we made them, and still be able to take vacations, eat out, and do all of the other things we like to do along the way. And, when you’re done making improvements, you’re not stuck paying for them for the next 15 years – you can enjoy the perks of a low mortgage payment instead.

Even though we swore we weren’t going to buy another fixer-upper, we accidentally fell in love with one, so it looks like we’re going to do it all over again. Our new house is a one owner home, which in this case means it’s outdated and well-maintained. Just what I like.

3. Good decorating takes a long time.

When we bought our current house, it was in such bad shape that we really couldn’t move in without making some improvements right away. While our new house is dated, the owners have done an incredible job maintaining it over the years, and this time our plan is to wait a little longer before we start making changes. We learned with our current house that jumping in to make changes right away isn’t always the best approach; it takes time to get to know a space and to figure out how you’ll really use it. And there’s the cost of fixing all those little decorating mistakes to think about, too (oh, the money I’ve wasted because I just couldn’t wait!).

So while I have lots of ideas for the new house, I want to spend more time planning and dreaming to ensure the changes we make are right for us in the short- and long-term. I also don’t want extra space (we’re nearly doubling our square footage) to become an excuse to amass stuff we really don’t need. One of the great things about living in a small house is that you literally don’t have room for stuff you don’t need. We received a copy of Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up for Christmas, and it inspired me to even further declutter our home. As I pack for our move, I’m trying to apply her principles to limit what we take with us, but I’m nervous about “crap creep” (my term) in the new house

I borrowed several design and decorating books from the library, including one called The Simple Home, that I’m really enjoying. This section in particular struck me, and reminds me of the first step in the KonMari method:

A simple home is not something you buy or assemble; it is something that you discover within yourself. The next time you are thinking about a home project, don’t grab for the glossy design magazines and books (except this one, of course). Instead, you might slow down and begin a “place journal,” a quiet, written diary of the feelings, sounds, and movement in your envisioned den or porch or cabin. Write a narrative of what it would feel like to walk into that room after being away for several months. How would it feel on a dark winter night or on the first day of spring? What are the furnishings and activities in such a place? Make a list of adjectives. You can also think of a room that you loved as a child. Ask yourself the same questions and write about it. This is the process of discovering the simple home within you. It’s not so much about what you want as who you are.

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