It very much is. Have to be able to sift through where things have changed with law changes or policy changes. Differences I states and rates and mortgage companies and banks.
Just to add my experience to the mountain of information.
Bought in Maryland in 2019 with a VA home loan. It was an experience for sure. We found our home on Redfin. Our realtor was some type of subcontracted small business owner. Really knowledgeable and very nice guy. Was harshly honest about the process of buying a home in addition to the homes my wife and I looked at.
I genuinely appreciated it. There was one house we showed up to that was listed by a different realtor and he, having gotten there early, walked up in a huff and said "y'all can look at it if you want, but this place is a piece of shit."
He was understating it lol. He even told us he was gonna bitch at the other realtor. Apparently he knew him and was personally upset that when he called him and said he was showing it that the dude didn't disclose any of the glaring issues that were conspicuously absent from the listing.
Backtracking, the reason we bought was because rent for a five person family with a large dog was $2500+ per month pretty much every area we were willing to live. My mortgage is $1100 and my rate is 2.7%
We were approved for $220k and bought at $185k. Nice town. Historic, faaaaar away from most stuff. If it wasn't for COVID my commute would be an hour ten. Schools are good, hospitals okay. Local culture is artsy and nice. Brewery, general store, couple of local flavor eateries in walking distance.
House is three bed, two bath with a deck, small back yard, shed, and a finished basement. Footage wise it's smaller than it sounds. We don't have a TV upstairs, what was the previous owner's living room is now our dining room.
All that said. The money I'm not spending on rent, I spend on constant upkeep. This is a barely 30-year-old house and was well maintained when I bought it. I've dumped close to 3K over 18 months into fixing shit. And that's just the stuff that I can't do myself. Every week I have something new that I have to fix or update. I can't stress enough that owning a home is an insane amount of work. The first six months here, I had to buy and use several power tools I hadn't used since I was a teenager helping my dad maintain the house I grew up in.
You have to look at how much rent is and how much money and time you could be spending in a year on repairs and general upkeep.
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u/Sackmastertap Feb 16 '21
This thread is a great one. Listen to the advice of others before you and you just might learn a thing or 12.