Purchasing a house is typically the largest investment any one person makes in their life. Houses can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on where you live, where the house is located within the city and what the house actually is.
However, before diving head first into purchasing a home just because a realtor or mortgage agent friend of yours is urging you to, it is time to make a little checklist to see if buying a house is really for you.
First things first, do you really want to own a house?
It is a lot of responsibility.
Unlike renting an apartment or townhome, you will be responsible for everything. If your furnace goes out, there goes $8,000 dollars right there to go and fix it (potentially). Garage door breaks? Yup, you called it, you have to fix it with your own money and time.
You cannot just get up and leave either if you are a fan of traveling.
In order to do that you will either need to sell off your house (which is a whole process in of itself), or you will need to have rental company to rent it out for you while you are gone. Unless of course you can find some tenants that are really something special that are going to pay you on time (be careful doing this though).
Alright, all that being said, there is a lot of benefits to owning your own chunk of land. For instance, you are going to build equity in your house. Rental money, while it is not exactly throwing money away, is never going to turn anything into an investment for you.
Over the long haul, your house can be used as a tool to further generate wealth on your behalf.
So how do we get into buying one where our mortgage payments are as cheap as possible?
First of all, save up a bigger down payment. The bigger your down payment, the less you will need to borrow money and the less you will have to pay in your monthly mortgage. This great, because ultimately you will be doing two things: learning how to save money, and paying far less in interest payments.
Second, start building a good credit rating now not when you are ready to apply for the home loan. Also, do not go out and start buying new cars or opening up new credit cards or taking on new debt during the actual mortgage application.
My father is a real estate agent, and I can tell you from first hand experience more young first time home buyers screw this up more than anything else. They could had gotten approved for a super nice house that would appreciate year after year, but instead they bought a brand new car where the majority of its value depreciates the moment it rolls off the lot.
Follow these two rules: save for a bigger down payment and build good credit.
If you do, it will save you a significant amount of money in the long haul and also it will make the often frustrating and confusing world of buying homes into a much simpler, smoother process for you.
Rudis Enterprises can help with a wide range of remodeling and construction projects from kitchen remodeling scranton pa to commercial landscaping. Give them a call today to see how they could help you with your project!