r/HouseBuyers

I see so many people who assume the bigger the house the better. It's not always the case. I lived in a 4500 sq ft home for many years. Never used 1/2 the sq footage. But I paid to heat, cool and clean it.

Downsized to a 1900 sq ft house, and it's perfect.

Obviously I'm not saying don't buy a big house. If that's what you want, awesome. Just saying, think about what you need and chances are the 2000 sq version will work as well for you as the 4000 sq version.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.

Edit: Lots of comments to the tune of "we need all the rooms". I missed a part of my original post I guess. The number of rooms we moved from didn't really change. We went from 5 bedrooms to 4 bedrooms and an office (5th bedroom sort of but it doesn't have a closet so legally it can't be called a bedroom). Went from 3.5 bathrooms to 2.5. The difference is all the rooms are smaller. The master bedroom is probably 1/3 the size, but the old one was enormous. The new one is perfectly fine. The old one had a laundry room the size of some small NYC apartments LOL. The new one is big enough for a washer and dryer and some shelves. Things like that. I liken it to instead of getting the XL meal, we got the medium size. We still left the restaurant full, we just didn't over eat.

Also addressing money. The move wasn't to save money. The smaller house was more expensive. We moved from the exurbs to in town. The new house is 125 years old, in the historic district. Weirdly enough even though the new house is more expensive, the property tax bill is lower. Same county, so the formula should be the same. Which makes no sense to me, but hey I'm not complaining. The funny thing is the people we bought the new house from, moved out to the area we moved from. Grass is always greener I guess right? Different people have different needs and wants and there's a house out there for everyone.

A house went up for sale down the street, and I'm having major buyer's remorse.

We bought a house last year that we've been updating over the last few months. It's been stressful and although we were prepared to spend money on renovations, it is quickly becoming a money pit. Big erosion issues, a pool that needs a lot of work, several big trees falling and losing privacy as a result, busy road noise etc. It feels like the repairs and renovations are getting away from us.

A house just went up for sale down the street, it's very outdated but it has all the fundamental things done, new windows, new roof, new hvac etc. It doesn't sit on a hill so there are none of the issues we are currently battling. It's not cheap, but it would definitely save us money in the long run.

We are looking at spending BIG money on things like retaining walls and pool issues caused by erosion at our house. A bathroom renovation doesn't scare me, but the earth slowly moving under us does. We would absolutely lose money on our current home, we've done a lot of upgrades already but the big scary stuff will scare people away. We were blissfully unaware of the biggest issues until we lived in the home, but they're all now exposed and obvious.

I'm seriously wondering if it would be worth cutting our losses and moving to the home down the street, paying the premium price but not having to deal with never ending projects and costs. We're hemorrhaging money, and it feels endless.

I know every house has updates and maintenance, and I know the grass may not be greener, but it truly feels never ending here, simply because of our home's unique hill location.

What would you do?

Buying a house in Michigan and close tomorrow. We did a walkthrough today and one of the things they agreed to fix was not quite fixed right, so our agent asked for a small credit, still waiting to hear back. Other homes in the neighborhood are not selling now for the same price we paid. The other houses are now asking about 5k less than we paid. They are slightly bigger but not as updated though and sitting. Ours has a kitchen and 2 bathrooms that were redone in last 10 years. The sellers have been difficult and with the way the housing market is I’m considering backing out. Not sure if it’s possible or not with the small issue but just not sure on the whole thing now.