5 Mistakes a New Home Owner Should Avoid
A new home owner is in a fragile situation because a house is a big life-altering investment. In most people’s cases, buying a new home is the biggest investment they will ever make in their entire life. But the process is so challenging due to inherent lack of information. Add the fact that there are individuals who seek to take advantage of misinformed buyers.
What makes things worse is that many new buyers are so overwhelmed by the process of buying a home, that they are more likely to settle on a deal without doing their research first. Even investors commit mistakes, and any real estate investor will tell you that there are 5 common mistakes that a new home owner tends to commit. If you want to avoid making these same mistakes, make a note of the following:
Failure to Get an Insurance Quote
Many potential homebuyers tend to act like deer caught in the headlights, which is understandable given how big of purchase a home will be. Unfortunately, this results in many investors forgetting due diligence and not bothering with an insurance quote.
Getting an insurance quote is very important because it will reveal crucial information about a home that a realtor will avoid mentioning (or even outright gloss over). Insurance providers, on the other hand, will do everything in their ability to uncover any points of concern in a home. You’ll gain access to information that will become a MAJOR part of your experience as a new home owner, such as:
- crime rates
- natural disaster risks
- type of neighborhood
- any other issues that affect insurance rates
Getting an insurance quote will sometimes singlehandedly prevent a new home owner from making a big life-ruining mistake.
Failure to Account for Traffic Situations
This is a very important matter for a new home owner when it comes to a house that is near a school or a central business district. You might have visited the property during off-peak hours, which tend to give you an inaccurate view of how congested the traffic will be.
Check during hours when school buses normally pick up kids or normal commute times, and you will see whether the place is prone to traffic congestion at inopportune times. This might not be a deal breaker for many people, but for potential homebuyers who must drive or commute to work every day, it is important to know whether they’ll regularly get stuck on traffic for hours on end. Because sometimes that’s not really worth the extra savings on mortgage.
Focusing Too Much on Aesthetic Selling Points
Realtors take great pains to make a property look beautiful before showing it to potential buyers. This is because most buyers tend to focus only on what they see. What they miss out on is the fact that realtors tend to hide potentially major issues behind the aesthetics.
A new home owner can also miss out on opportunities for savings due to focusing too much on what is already beautiful, when there are properties that would look so much better and would be an even better deal. These properties only need a little bit of extra work upon buying.
Disregarding the Neighbors
A new home owner may fail to consider the fact that he can always improve a house, but won’t be able to do anything about the people around the property. One can throw money at the problem until the cows come home, but he’ll have a miserable time if the neighbors are unruly.
Many homeowners tend to be surprised when a very beautiful property turns out to be a horrible experience due to neighbors who are racist, noisy, unruly, or just plain troublesome. It is something that you might want to look out for before settling down on a house.
Forgetting Cellphone Signal and Internet Access for a New Home Owner
This may seem like a very minor thing, but access to information is very important these days. You will have second thoughts about buying a house that is off the grid or has no basic utilities, so it stands to reason that a site with no communication with the outside world should still be worth mulling over. You don’t want to be in a situation where you need to contact emergency services, but won’t be able to because there are no cellphone signal or internet in your area.
Now, the mistakes outlined above are not intended to cause paranoia or steer you away from buying a property. They are meant to help and reduce the number of home owners that make life-ruining choices. So keep the lessons in mind before you look at another property listing.