First Time Home Buying Advice

[holidaymama]

We are about to buy our first house. It will be decent sized around 1400 sq. ft. (perfect for our family of 4). The mortgage + taxes + insurance should come out at about $1200/monthly. We are in an apt right now (1300 sq. ft) and pay electric and water. I think the electric will stay around the same and I know the water will go up, but what other house bills should we prepare for?

Our income is $5500/monthly after taxes and all of our insurance and retirement.

We pay $965 right now and always put $1000 a month into savings. We will try to save the same after, but I am saying for sure $750 a month.

We live very comfortably compared to the last 5 years as students with babies! We are staying as frugal as we were then, just now we want to own our own home!

I would love all the advice you have! Thanks ladies!

[normajean]

Keep some money earmarked for home repairs, etc. Plan several hundred just the first month for fixing miscellaneous things, $100 or so a month for small repairs/maintenance costs, and start saving toward a fund for bigger repairs like the eventual new roof, appliances that will eventually break, etc. We bought our house in great condition, it didn't need any repairs right away, but it did need new toilet seats (previous owners took the old ones with them), light bulbs, furnace & a/c filters, window coverings, etc.

You will probably need lawn care equipment & yard tools, if you weren't taking care of the yard where you were renting.

Do you already own a washer/dryer?

Is your new house all electric? If not there will be a gas bill. Also water & sewer bills.

$1200 is a very reasonable payment on a $5500 take home income.

[Usually Curious]

I'd wait another year. The market is far from bottomed out.

[GoddessKristie]

My best advice is to see a mortgage broker that is certified by HUD rather than going to a bank. We went to two different banks who offered us terrible terms before we saw a mortgage broker. Ours was HUD certified and he knew about options that noone else we knew had even heard about. He got us a great deal with a shockingly low interest rate and everything went perfectly!
I hope you find a wonderful home and wish you lots of luck!

[GoddessKristie]

Oh yeah, also keep in mind that if you aren't running a washer/dryer your electric will probably go up.

[BetsyS]

Spring always brings along a bigger bill for us because of the garden/yard work stuff. My dh loves it, but all that stuff at the garden center adds up.

[holidaymama]

We do have a washer/dryer, so that we are used to...and blessed to have!!!

[lmonter]

Electricity/Gas. Gas can be pretty darn pricey. Depends on layout of the house, and how well insulated it is.

Water/Sewer/Garbage. Our county doesn't have mandated garbage pickup, so we just take our stuff to the county dumpsters or dump when we need to (saves us $30-some a month).

HOA stuff. I don't live in one (yay!) so I don't know what stuff they can make you do. Plus it tends to vary.

Home repairs and maintenance. Water heaters, air conditioners, furnaces, roofs, windows, garage doors, kitchen appliances aren't free. Much as I wish they were.
Dh says don't plan on every appliance in the house to work - if you plan that it's going to need replaced within a year or so, you will be so far ahead of hubby and I, it's not even funny. Even if things last another ten years, but you have money set aside just-in-case, you're golden.

Lawn maintenance. Whether you have just grass that needs to be mowed (buy a lawnmower or pay a high school student to do it, whatever), want/plan to have a garden (which can get pricey to some degree if you're insane like me - my Christmas request for next year is cold frames), etc.

Hubby says if it's got a furnace, get it inspected. If there's a fireplace or wood stove, get it inspected to make sure it meets code, chimney's clean, etc. Especially if you plan on using them.

If/when you get the house inspected, make sure inspector's bonded. Means if they miss something, then you have a way to get those things repaired and not all on your dollar. Should take them like 1-2 hours or more.

Septic - if you have a septic tank, have owners pump it shortly before you close/move in.

[monkeybars]

Congratulations - it sounds like you are in great shape financially. No matter what the condition of the house or despite whatever the home inspector says, something always comes up to surprise you in the first year. Before you close, make sure the sellers provide you with an upgraded home warrantee to make the inevitable surprise less painful! Good luck, and it is worth it

[savithny]

Originally Posted by holidaymama

We are about to buy our first house. It will be decent sized around 1400 sq. ft. (perfect for our family of 4). The mortgage + taxes + insurance should come out at about $1200/monthly. We are in an apt right now (1300 sq. ft) and pay electric and water. I think the electric will stay around the same and I know the water will go up, but what other house bills should we prepare for?

Our income is $5500/monthly after taxes and all of our insurance and retirement.

We pay $965 right now and always put $1000 a month into savings. We will try to save the same after, but I am saying for sure $750 a month.

We live very comfortably compared to the last 5 years as students with babies! We are staying as frugal as we were then, just now we want to own our own home!

I would love all the advice you have! Thanks ladies!

Congratulations! We bought our house last year, when DH got his "Big Boy JOb" (as we jokingly call it) after years of grad school and postdoctoral fellows. It's so weird to have a house and some disposable income....

Our electric went up quite a bit even though we had the same # of appliances. What I figured out is that here, electricitiy has a base charge for the privelege of them delivering electricity to your house. In an apt, that fee is smaller, or divided up by all the units -- something like that. But the base rate to get services to a single family home is higher.

Don't forget to budget for the kind of stuff you didn't have in an apartment -- yard and lawn care, snow removal etc. Even if you do it all yourself, there's an investment in supplies (mower, shovels, rakes etc), and you'll probably find things that "need doing." They can be done frugally (I have a coworker who loves to share perennials), but at least something needs to be done. Budget for home repairs too. We have both what I call the "capital fund" for big things down the road, but also the month-to month household budget, that covers things like paint, minor repairs, the discovery that we have no coathooks, the "oops, we need a really big doormat here" kind of thing.

[holidaymama]

Thank you all soooooo much!!!! And for some of your husband's advice

I think I should clear up a few things because some of the advice is not too relevant (although still appreciated!)

We live in Texas. So no snow...usually! The house is only 4-5 years old. It is in a very new little development. We will have a small yard...i hate that part, but the thought of an acreage scares the bajeebies out of my husband right now! Also, I don't think there is any gas...we don't need it for heat down here. I guess though that making sure the air conditioner is in good condition will be the biggest thing.

Also, the HOA fees are very large BUT here's what we get...a 25 acre lake with trails, a covered basketball court, tennis court, volleyball, 16 parks (there are only 4,000 people right now), a three story workout facility, 2 pools, with tunnel slides (think water park) planned activities for the community, and little league...I think you can probably see why we are going to commute 40 minutes to work to live here with our two young children!

I know it's going to grow like crazy, but we are new to the city life and where we live now is just to close to the city. This community is out in the country...that is how we grew up. I CAN NOT wait to start making community friends and for my boys to be able to make neighbor friends.

We just can't handle apartment life any longer...we are even going to pay out 3 months of our lease to move earlier.

As you can see I am VERY excited, but VERY nervous about the unexpected at the same time.

Keep the advice coming!!

[lmonter]

Originally Posted by holidaymama

We live in Texas. So no snow...usually! The house is only 4-5 years old. It is in a very new little development. We will have a small yard...i hate that part, but the thought of an acreage scares the bajeebies out of my husband right now! Also, I don't think there is any gas...we don't need it for heat down here. I guess though that making sure the air conditioner is in good condition will be the biggest thing.

Hopefully your development is different than the ones where I live. My 30yo house has things that need replaced here and there - despite it being built somewhat shoddily for the 70's, it's holding up really well. But the new subdivision housing around here? They "forget" to wrap the house (you know, that Tyvek-type plastic stuff they put on the outside of the frame/plywood or whatever to keep mold and moisture out), plaster will settle and crack on the walls at a few years old, the vinyl windows will try to seal themselves shut after a few years (and windows are freakin' expensive!), etc. So make sure your house is made of higher quality materials, otherwise you may find yourself basically rebuilding the darn thing in 5 years like some folks I know.

The amenities do sound neat though.

[beachmouse]

Our electric bill actually went down significantly when we moved from a poorly insulated 1000 sf end unit townhouse to a well-insulated 1700 sf single family house.

Best thing you can do is call the electric company and ask them what the monthly charges at a given address have been. Most will gladly give you the info, and you can get a fairly good idea of where it sits.

Our big utility increase came from pest control. Between termite bond and quarterly painful cockroach death experiences, it runs us about $600/year.