518
me_irl
(thelemmy.club)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
518 points (98.0% liked)
me_irl
7919 readers
1758 users here now
All posts need to have the same title: me_irl it is allowed to use an emoji instead of the underscore _
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Great job though. Persistence really pays off. My wife and I bought a house in an ok neighborhood and struggled to pay it off for almost ten years. When covid hit and they were offering 2% loans we had about $20k left to pay on it. By the time we found the next place we wanted and saved a down payment, prices had shot up, interest rates were higher, but we ended up buying points instead of using all of our money for down payment and got our current interest rate below 3%. Our old house, which was paid off, sat on the market for almost 3 months before we sold it, put all the money toward our current home, and did a refinance for the same interest rate for six figures less.
Starter homes are especially great when you know it's a starter home. You don't dump a ton of money into it, everything becomes "will this decision add value when we sell it" and you don't get emotionally tied to it. It's a stepping stone to get you where you want to be.
I respectfully disagree with that final statement. At least, my opinion on it differs from yours. Which is fine.
We're in our first starter home right now, and we definitely have plans to make changes that will potentially drop its resell value. Why? Because we live here now, and probably for the next decade, and we want to fix things that annoy us.
Namely we plan to knock out a wall to make the kitchen/dining more open, and it'll flow better into the living room too. But then it goes from a 3 bedroom house, to 2 🤷♂️
My in-laws just built a house, and I kind of hate it. They even dislike a lot of things about it, but everything they did to build that house, every decision, was 100% about resale. I don't even mean big stuff, I mean every little detail. Like they're living in a showroom. That's just not for me.
I can understand your point. We did some minor changes for my wife's peace of mind, but we bought the home with the idea that it wasn't our forever home. The one we're in now we are keeping though. We've remodeled the previous owners remodeled kitchen... Added things to the house that do nothing for value, but the pressure of knowing we're going to have to resell it is completely gone.
We had a 15 year mortgage on the old house and the whole point was to pay it off and get rid of it while we looked for something better. We never even painted the walls, it was still contractor beige when we left. Our house was livable though and already open concept, so we didn't really have to make any major changes to it. We just turbo cash dumped into the principal at every chance.
That being said, if my wife would have had any major issues, we would have changed things. It was just "acceptable" enough for us to treat it like a long ass lease and leave it almost like we found it.
Thank you! It’s definitely been a process. Even if I never move beyond it I know having a home is a privilege now.