Make Sure You Don’t Forget These Hidden Costs When You Buy Your New Home

I adore telling the story of the time we bought our dream home back at the end of 2014. We built our first home when we were planning our wedding 12 years ago, and we had a long time to become ‘new homeowners’ again. We forgot some things; some very important things. We forget that things happen, things come up and there are expenses that have to be paid when you buy a new home – most of them unexpected. We knew we’d be putting down a huge down payment, and the idea of spending more than that was a bit appalling; but it was our reality. On that note, I don’t want you to be blindsided by all the things that you might forget about when you buy your new home so I have a few here for you to note.

HOAs

If you live in a ‘hood with a homeowner’s association, as we do, you have to pay that. Ours isn’t much and we only pay once per year, but some people pay monthly and some people pay a huge fee. If you don’t take that into consideration, you’re going to be in a financial bind.

Repairs

We moved into our house on October 18. By 7 am I was here painting our kids’ bedrooms while my husband was at our other home with our friends and family loading the moving trucks. By 8 pm the only thing we had left to do was clean up the floors and order dinner. We were completely moved in, unpacked and decorated (I’m efficient and I like it done). And then our toilets and showers began overflowing with the flush of a toilet. Turns out our septic tank was full. You can’t get a plumber out after dark, and we had to pay to have that drained, have a new drain field lid put in and we had to pay a Sunday fee. Fun. Tomorrow we’ll check our residential roofing to determine if it needs roof repair in order to prevent major damages. If you’re curious about who would benefit most from metal roofing, take the time to find out the ideal homeowner for metal roofing option.

New Furniture

We had a house filled with beautiful and lovely furniture, but we moved into a house three times the size of the old house. That meant we now had additional living rooms, bedrooms, play rooms, porches, decks and dining areas. We had a bigger bar in need of more bar stools and additional bathrooms. We forgot about that, so furnishing all those additional rooms was a bit expensive.

Lawn Care

I budgeted for this because we have always had lawn care. What I neglected to consider was the fact that we now have a lawn 5 times the size of our old one, and that meant we would pay significantly more. I also forgot to make that consideration with things like pest control; but, you live and you learn. So I’m sharing with you so that you know to keep these expenses in mind when you buy or build your next house.

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