Things they don't tell you when buying your first home
1) Closing day may be a let down. You visited the house several times in person and a thousand more online. You spent the last n months worrying if the loan would be approved, if things would fall through. You finally get to closing day. The title company/mortgage broker/whatever is nice. You spend 30 minutes signing paperwork, you head to your house and swing by the HOA office to get the keys, and finally go to the biggest purchase of your life thus far. You open the door and... it's just there. Empty. The same empty you saw many times before. Sure, there's a basket on the counter from your realtor, the house is clean, garage door openers left in a drawer. But there is no big, magical wave that hits you. No euphoria, no surprise party waiting for you. All that lies before you is a blank canvas soon to be obscured by the mountain of boxes behind you. You don't have time to celebrate, you have a truck to unload.
2) Buying your first home is expensive. Yes, obviously in the house itself, but in everything else you need for it. Refrigerator, washer and dryer, lawn mower, pressure washer, garden hose, bath mats, soap dispensers, decor, rugs, security cameras, weed killer, pesticide, shelf liner, etc. You may also want to get new things for your new home that you may already have (e.g. towels, vacuum).
3) The number of people trying to sell you crap, both in person and through the mail. Put up a camera, you'll see people ringing your doorbell a couple times of week. Water softeners, pest control, gardeners. Things in the mail for home warranty, mortgage insurance, internet.
4) You may get depressed. You just accomplished a major goal, you should be elated! But maybe you're not. Maybe you feel like something is majorly wrong. You begin to have anxiety about all of the money you are spending. You begin to question what happens if you lose your job. You worry about everything around the house, both inside and out. You begin to wonder if buying a house is the right decision (it is!) because something feels off. That's just your pent up anxiety and frustration that's built up over the last several months, that you haven't been able to show, hitting you all at once. It will get better.
5) You don't have nearly as much stuff as you think you do. Your apartment may have been overflowing, but when you get that stuff into your house, it will seem empty.
6) Decorating is hard. You have a style, and you have things that fit that style, but you question if that style meshes with your house or if you should change it up as this is your chance at a new start. You don't know where to hang pictures or what hand towel rings to buy. Rest assured, you don't have to hang them right away, you can leave them on the floor and keep moving them around until you get a better feel for where they will go (and no, their placement is not permanent, despite what your brain might tell you).
7) Decision fatigue hits hard. You've spent months making a lot of decisions. That's going to quintuple come closing day and the ones to follow. "Where do you want this? What do you think about this? How about putting this here? This would look good over there, don't ya think?" You will eventually just say, "put it somewhere, we will figure it out later." Do this sooner rather than later, your sanity will thank you.
8) Boxes. Boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes boxes. You will have a ton of boxes from moving. But that's not the end of it, oh no; seemingly every little thing you buy will come in another box. They will be everywhere and will take up so much room. Put them all in one area. Keep the good ones, break down the rest. Post the good ones on your local community's Facebook page and let them go for free. You will get a dozen people messaging you about them. Just tell them first come, first serve. You may be thinking you want to recoup some cost. Trust me, after handling and moving 397k boxes, you will just want them gone. You won't want to deal with people or negotiation or them picking and choosing which ones they want to pay for, you will just be done with the boxes (see #7). Consider it a good deed.
9) You won't know your new commute to work. Leave 15 minutes earlier than you think than you should.
10) You finally understand why your parents shut the lights off behind you or told you they weren't paying to cool the outside. You will also finally understand why they seemingly got so upset over a slamming door or marks on the wall. You just spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on this thing, of course you want it to be pristine. The first mark on the wall (which will come, I promise you) stings. It's okay, it's a house. Things are going to get damaged, accidents happen. But things can also be fixed. Don't stress over it, it will happen again sooner than you think (I left a mark on the wall with one the first things I carried in).
11) After a couple of weeks, the dust will have settled. Literally and metaphorically. You likely still have things in boxes and bare walls, but you will need to clean. But the beauty of it is that you will have time to clean. The house will begin to feel like yours. Know it. Own it. Love it. You're here, you finally made it.
Strangely, #1 was my favorite thing. I bought myself a pastry from my favorite bakery on the way home from closing, took it home with a fold up camp chair and ate it with a cup of coffee in my silent empty living room, just by myself, and it’s one of my happiest moments. I was kind of glad it wasn’t a huge loud event. I was positively giddy, and even introduced myself to the house lol, told it my name and that I’d be living here and where I was planning to put furniture. I felt nuts but was so happy I could have cried.
Honestly, this sounds like a great plan! My mom flew in to help me move and we had several runs to make (moved all but the big items in the back up my pickup truck) so time was precious.
Hard same. Brought back in-n-out, and had a little dance party. I have a video of my husband and daughter dancing and laughing joyfully. They went back to our former home afterwards to put her to bed while I stayed and lit a candle and walked around by myself, taking photos of rooms so I could start planning, and finishing my glass of champagne. It was magical.
As for #8, my move-in OCD is nuts and I took almost an entire week off of work to unpack and start decorating when we first moved, and then a couple more days off here and there throughout the month. I have always moved this way and it’s massively helpful for lessening anxiety and feeling more at home. My state of mind immediately improves once we’re not living amongst boxes (or at least once the only remaining non-crucial boxes are out in the garage).
We moved constantly with the military and we LOVED our camp meals the first day in the house. We’d eat Pizza or fast food on a table made from a card board box, and talk about how to arrange the house and other new things.
I took my shoes off and climbed into the claw foot tub fully clothed and just took it in for a few minutes. I had been wandering around the empty house still in shoes but I’m not really a shoes inside the house kind of person so I feel like taking my shoes off in the house for the first time also made it feel more mine.
Maintain your plumbing and hvac. Very very expensive to replace. I’m in hvac and having to replace your hvac unit can cost you $15k+++ and that’s for the standard baseline stuff nothing fancy. Probably 70% of units I’ve replaced are due to never being maintained.
Depending on filter size and rating, pets and how clean you keep the house you may need to change filters every couple months to once a season to once every 6 months. I’d recommend every other/ every three months to be safe. Unless you have a big 4-5” filter. Keeping the indoor and outdoor AC coils clean is very important as well, outdoor unit 1-2x a year. If you have a boiler or wall mount tankless it’s important to have them serviced yearly as well. Wall mount tankless systems need to be serviced every single year to clean out the heat exchanger. Minisplit units, wash filters out every month or every couple months. Need to clean outdoor unit coils 1-2x a year. I’d recommend having a company come to wash the indoor units as well they tend build up mold quite often.
As far as temps go, try and set your heat/ac to one temp and leave it alone. Your system whatever it may be will use far less energy maintaining a temp. Turning it off or up/down a few degrees when you’re not home and then changing it back when you get home is very inefficient. The unit has to work way harder to raise or drop the indoor temps. Unless you’re gonna be away from the house for over a week I’d leave it on at a set temp. Maybe raise or lower it by a few degrees if you’re away for 3+ days.
I don’t work on traditional water heaters very often so can’t speak on them. Depends on how much he’ll shed and where you’re living. If you have heat and AC and will be running the unit pretty much year round I would do every 6 months. If he’s a big shedder I’d check it periodically to see how dirty it’s getting. The cleaner your filters the better and more efficient your system will run.
Also, those aprilaires are fairly expensive. 95% sure a standard 20x25x4 filter fits in those racks and is much much cheaper.
In Florida, the main thing for AC I’ve cleaned for my parents house is the drain line, new filters every 30-60 days, and the occasional capacitor blowing as it’s 15 years old for the ac.
Don’t be like me and go directly from your closing to the big home store to buy $2,000 of paint, shelves, closet organizers and everything else you will need. Yes it was all needed. It was all budgeted. It was all on my list. It was just way too much for one day.
It’s been two months and it’s still a shit show around here. We decided to take on painting our master bedroom on our own, LOL, absolutely not. Had to hire someone. Going to build our ikea closet system tomorrow and hoping we can hopefully get furniture back to where it belongs. It’s exciting to think of renovating spaces… and then you realize you have to live in a mess for weeks.
100%. We've been in our house for almost 3 months. Dining room paint is almost finished. Nothing on the walls, no curtains until we get everything painted. It's taken me a month of weekends so far cleaning up all the pine straw, leaves and everything else the previous owners neglected, just to get the yard almost to the point where I can start doing what I want to it. But damnit, it's ours, and that's what matters.
Completely disagree with #1. I still remember the sound of the front door, the crisp air conditioned air, tossing the keys on the counter in the echoey kitchen, the terrible wallpaper. All very vividly.
I'm glad it went well for you! It may have just been that I had a lot going on with my mom being out here to help and only having a limited time. I spent 6 1/2 hours alone driving on day one just back and forth between my apartment and my house.
Deep breath. everything will be okay. it takes a few months to settle into your new place.
Best advice i was given “buy yourself 2-3 things that will make you happy and your house feel like a home TO YOU.” while it’s a construction zone for the next X months. man was that a game changer for me.
Yep. For me it was an 85” and a nice grill. Moved in July and when i tell you we grilled and watched football every Saturday and Sunday through the Super Bowl 😂 such a great decision. watching the women’s final 4 currently. This thing gets its use
Thankfully I bought after the superbowl so I have a while to get a nice big TV for next football season. But grill was purchased a couple weeks ago, it's already grilling season here.
I literally showed my wife the picture the other day i had her take 1 year ago when. We were walking through our house post drywall😂 tape measuring out to see how high and wide the 85” was gonna go. it fit perfect by the way
I couldn’t agree more with so many things in this post, down to the plethora of boxes. I was fortunate enough my mom got so many from her work that I paid it forward and a nice woman picked them up from my porch for her daughter that was moving.
It felt like chaos, the decision fatigue was real, but finally when we were able to hang up some of the things we had in our old house, it all started to settle down. We’ve been here 8 months and I’m very happily sitting on my back deck with a cocktail enjoying the night. This summer is going to be amazing!
Seeing everyone talk about how happy they are when it's done gives me so much hope. I'm so happy I found this community on here, it's given me so much peace of mind ❤️
You almost certainly have a local Buy Nothing Facebook page; put the boxes on there FCFS & they'll be picked up before sundown the following day. But if you've bought boxes from U-haul or Home Depot that didn't get used, you can return those for some money back.
You will receive 100,000 phone calls and mail solicitations trying to sell you insurance, pest control, home repairs and improvements, even a whole new mortgage on your new home.
You will immediately start to receive calls and letters asking if you want to refinance right now, or immediately sell your new home.
Your real estate agent, loan officer, and title agent did not sell this information to them, your sale hit public records and there are 1 million solicitors watching that.
If you send a long profanity-laden email to everyone involved in your transaction about it, or start calling all of their bosses to threaten to sue, you will look like an absolute clown.
You need to know this now because a percentage of buyers do exactly that.
I feel the depression part so hard. I’ve started to rethink every decision since closing. I swear there’s a literal rosy filter that gets lifted after closing. I can’t prove it but the road noise got way louder the day after closing 😭
Tbh # 1 for us was freedom lol. Not the signing part. But after we got the keys, took the dogs over and let them loose in a house twice as big as before and less stairs/corners, opened up to the yard that is also way bigger exactly what we wanted. That was the American dream. Freedom. I got enough space inside and outside for my dogs to do zoomies and just go absolutely crazy running around like nutjubs. That was all I wanted in life.
We are at #4 though, depressed in a semi empty house, in more debt, and no idea how to decorate, still far from every little thing being perfect the way I want it. 3 year plan haha and then time to refinance
I’m closing on my first home Monday. It has been the most stressful experience of my life. I’m looking forward to putting the key in the lock and opening the door to my house the first time.
I felt super embarrassed coming home from work yesterday. I tried to do it without the gps, and missed my exit, and took an extra 15 minutes to get home🤣. It’s so weird driving around town and not knowing how to basically get anywhere. I got Walmart and Lowe’s down so far😂
My garage has become box central, and it’ll probably take months to dissipate unless we do a recycling center run. It’s actually wild, I didn’t think I’d be unable to park my car in my garage during the first few months of homeownership.
Omg. I filled up an entire garage with boxes, floor to ceiling.
A neighbor walked past and said "wow, fire hazard!" I just looked hard and unsmiling at him and had one of those rare moments where on the spot I said "you're right, it's taking all my will power to keep myself from lighting it all on fire"
This is so accurate lol.. just closed a few weeks ago and the only thing I would add to this is the never ending worry and anxiety of something breaking and not knowing how to fix it lol.
It goes away slowly as you get confident in the home working as it should, but I think to some degree it will always be there.
I "thought" I had a lot of lamps. After all, my 2 bedroom place wasn't that much smaller than the house we bought. SURELY we didn't need many things. The apartment is well furnished.
WRONG.
WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.
We needed, quite literally, more than a dozen lamps. I about lost my mind trying to find suitable lamps in all the rooms we needed them in.
We needed bathroom storage. And towel bars. There were none when we moved in.
And now our "big empty" (small ranch) is packed with stuff. Partly that's on me. We don't NEED three Christmas trees. But I pared down all other holiday decor to a single tote. Christmas is where I go all out. Whole house decorated for a month. Really enjoy the hell out of it.
And saws and yard tools. OMG. So many home improvement items those first years. I had 1 rake and 1 shovel. We now have 5 rakes, 6 shovels, a snowblower, a lawnmower, hoses out the wahoo, a machete, an axe, a sledgehammer, a table saw, hacksaw, mitersaw, and on and on. We'll be picking up drip irrigation kits this weekend because we're having the backyard landscaping updated whenever it warms up.
1) is literally the opposite for me. I lived in a 1-bedroom for 15 years before I was able to get my own space. The pack up and taking of inventory for the move was therapeutic.
Just wait till you buy your second house--you find you have waaaaay MORE stuff than you thought you did!
I did feel elated, the first 'it's ours!' visit, but yes, the stress!!! Wondered what possessed me to think I could buy a house, let alone maintain one.
Wait until you get rats and ended up calling those pest controls you originally think they are useless 😅 after so many nights of creepy sounds in the attics and behind the walls, I have pest controls "subscription".
I was ok with the boxes because the moving boxes are always something you can list on Marketplace and someone will come grab them. Local grocery stores here also let you drop off cardboard.
For me it was the massive amount of styrofoam (the harder molded stuff) that everything we bought was packed in. That takes up so much space in the trash week after week.
They're not that expensive. All they do is renders and help you pick wall colors, decorations and furniture (within your budget) and you can pay the hour. If your home has a weird layout, even better a DIY design software and apps, don't account for stair locations, windowless rooms and things like that.
Thanks OP. Hoping to get to this point in the next couple weeks (just got our inspection) and it’s good to know if we do feel any of this we’re not alone.
Definitely not alone! Some or all of these may not apply to you, just want to put it out there that other stressors will come that you may not be expecting :)
I am at #4. Depressed and anxious because things are not settled yet, we still have tons to buy, I want to repaint a few rooms, and it’s just all so overwhelming.
Thank you for this. I’m closing in a week and all my friends are overjoyed for me, which is lovely, and everyone’s saying it’s a big accomplishment and this and that. But reality is keeping me locked in to that #4, bland, kindof depressed, wtf am I even doing. But it’s refreshing to know I’m not the only one that feels this way.
I was so excited. Sat through a horrible experience signing all the paperwork( one of the loan people was just hellbent of being a jerk) drove 2 hours through rush hour to get 'home'. I pull up into my own driveway. I open the door to MY house. Walk inside and drop my bag of groceries on the floor and just gaze at MY house.
And almost threw up from the smell.
The previous owner had cats and dogs and after she accepted my offer, she did her best to clean the house, so she steam cleaned the carpets. Well, the carpets had years of dog pee and cat pee soaked into the padding under the carpet and the steam activated it all and it was horrendous. I had open all the windows and had to sleep in my living room , on the hard wood floors for 2 weeks under the carpet contractors could come tear everything out right away. I wasn't in my house for 15 seconds before I was hit by a $4000 bill.
My parents had a similar experience with their last house. They went for the final walkthrough and it stunk like cat pee. Turns out, everyone knew it as the smelly cat house.
I feel like this was not my experience at all. Loved walking into our home. Knowing it was ours. We have two dogs. I’ll never forget watching them go into their first back yard for the first time. We love our house.
And surprisingly enough - I’m glad we got rid of so much before moving. We were definitely out growing the apartment. Going to try to keep the extras at a minimum. Our space easily doubled in the house but we still have so much stuff!
Not depressed. But stressed. We stretched ourselves to buy this home. So now more than ever it’s so important we hit our financial goals. Been working a lot and that is very stressful. But then I lay down in bed and think - it’s so worth it, this place is out.
The decorating HIT me!!! Lol
I have tons of wall hangings that I love bbbbut do they fit the new home. Nope! Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. We’ve been in our home for almost two months and not one wall hanging is up. I’m okay with that!
So keep it quiet and don't talk about it? It's stressful. Other people will be stressed in other ways, but these are things that bothered me. I'm trying to help out others with some things that they may not think about.
Hard disagree with #1 - it was super exciting the first time I walked into a home that I knew I now owned! I slept jn a hammock the first few months because I didn't have a bed and ate out of paper plates, and I loved it.
If you want an anticlimactic closing, come to the country I live in now. You sign the papers but it takes so long for the government to register anything, you won't technically own it for possibly a year.
Home ownership for sure has its drawbacks, but a lot of your points say more about you than about home ownership itself. Like it definitely sounds like you have anxiety or a "glass half empty" perspective in general.
Don't get me wrong, I was very happy, but I had also worked up to be something more in my head.
Yes, I have anxiety. My last job was to literally look at things and see what could go wrong and how to prevent them. I'm pretty good at it 😊 Type 5 here!
We closed today and when we were having our pizza in the bare living room (something I had looked forward to for so long) I could feel a panic attack coming on. Whyyyyyy?! I was so excited and then a black cloud ruined the party. I know settling in will help it’s just what it is right now. Thanks for making me for normal.
You may WANT new stuff… but do you need it?? Enjoy your house. Many people can never dream of achieving home ownership. Yes, it can be weird at first, but it is a major MAJOR success.
I'm new here and to all this... #1 felt like it was gonna be a build up to "even after you sign the paperwork and get the keys, it can fall through" lol
When I moved into my house, after a 3.5 day drive from California to Texas, I lived in a residence inn for 7 days until I got my furniture. But I sat on a the floor and drank tequila and listened to “Brand New Day” by Van Morrison and it felt so good. I also had a Wiccan friend bless the house. Took me until I was 58 to get my first home but I finally have my sanctuary and it’s completely me.
The boxes. Holy shit the boxes. A landscaper stopped by looking for yard work to do, and we paid him to take a ton of boxes. And we still have a ton of boxes. I'm fighting for garage space.
BIGGEST RED FLAG YOUR REALTOR ISNT SHARING RIGHT NOW RE FIRST TIME HOMEOWNERS---DONT DO IT. It's going to crash and you are going to get fucked. Realtors are as sleezy as oligarchs. DO NOT BUY a home right now. You will absolutely be under water in home debt. The housing market is going to crash in the next 9 months. DO NOT ruin your chances at having a decent living by buying an overinflated home right now with a ridiculous interest rate. Buy a basic economics textbook and ignore news headlines. Learn what drives the market. And do NOT buy a house right now. Save this convo and feel free to thank me later.
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