One of the most exciting parts of starting a family is creating memories together in your home. There are few things more sentimental then looking at your home years down the road and being reminded of precious moments of your children’s lives. However, before you can get started making memories, you’ll need to find the perfect home to buy.
The home buying process can be incredibly overwhelming if you don’t know the ins and outs. It’s easy to get confused with all of the conflicting information. It can be hard to weed out the solid advice from hearsay.
To help you during your home buying process, here are some of the most important things that you’ll need to consider when looking around.
Size
When it comes to your home, size certainly does matter, especially if you ever want to sell your home down the road.. It doesn’t make sense looking at a two-bedroom apartment if you’re a family of five. When deciding between going bigger or going smaller, it’s usually a good idea to go bigger.
The chances of you expanding as a family are greater in many cases. You want to make sure that you can comfortably stay in the home that you buy for years to come without having to move again. Therefore if you’re expecting to have more children soon, make sure you buy a house that can support that.
Neighborhood
As they say, location location location. When looking around at homes, it’s important that you investigate more than what meets the eye. Explore outside just the house for sale you’re looking at and take a look at the neighborhood.
What are the neighbors look like? What is the crime rate? Are there parks or grocery stores nearby that you may be able to benefit from? What’s the average price range in the neighboring houses, and will you feel comfortable in that environment? The neighborhood plays a huge role in how happy you’ll be in your home for the long term.
Proximity To Work
Even though driving 45 minutes to your job every day may not seem like a big deal now, it can start to get tedious as the years go by. When there’s traffic, you may add as much as an hour on to your commute, which can drain huge parts of your day. Even though your home may be a favorable price, you want to ask yourself whether the commute is really worth the savings.
In addition to proximity to work, you also want to make sure that it’s close enough to your children’s school and any activities you have to drive them to throughout the week. Take a look around for any bus stops and see if using public transportation may be an option as well.