Owning your own home is amazing, it is something I will never regret doing. However, we were young when we purchased our home and changing from privately renting to owning your property was a huge change. There were costs involved that we never saw when renting your home rather than owning it.
I mean, when our boiler broke down in our rented home, we called the agency and someone was out to look at it within 24 hours. Garage door not opening? No worries, they sent someone out to look into it and see what was wrong.
This list may seem a bit basic to those who already own their own home, I just hope that someone about to take the step onto the property ladder can learn from our experiences over the last 12 years!
- Insurances – There are insurances out there for everything to do with your home and it is important to make sure you get the essential ones. Firstly mortgages require you to get home insurance, this is to protect the building should the worse happen. We have building and content insurance to protect our home and everything in it. There are also insurances for boilers, water pipes to your home and more. It is worth considering the ones you really need to get and then weighing up the pros of some of these insurances to the alternatives out there.
- Build an emergency fund pot – Unless you have lots of disposable income it is worth building an emergency fund pot, just in case. It is not cheap getting a heating engineer in if your boiler stops working or a plumber if you spring a leak. Costs of a repair in the home can cause a huge dent to your budget, building a little pot to back you up should the worse happen is always a wise idea.
- Look to the future – As we never really decorated in our old house we used to rent, then when we started decorating in our own home, the cost of things such as curtains etc surprised me. If you are moving into a house that requires a little work over time, take into consideration the cost of flooring (if budgets are tight but you want good-looking wooden flooring, consider getting Tongue and Groove Flooring, looks good and lasts well at a fraction of the cost!) wallpaper, curtains etc. They soon start to add up and it was only after we moved in that I realised the plans in my head were going to take a lot longer to achieve due to restraints.
Even though we have had a few bumps along the way, I never regret buying our own home. It is an investment for our future and I still have plans for this home before we eventually retire to our forever home in the country. I just wish there were a few things that we knew before we had started on the journey, including the moving costs! It was almost as if we were spoilt in our privately rented accommodation as they looked after the house so well (as did we).
