You’ve tuned into countless celebrity home tours. Your Pinterest has five different boards about your dream house. It’s easy to tell what you want, but don’t forget that buying a home is more about what you need.
Save yourself from unnecessary financial and emotional pains by learning to strike a balance. As you go about house hunting, you’ll get a better grasp of what it means to style your dream home into something that accommodates your present reality. This mindset makes you more efficient when choosing a floor plan that everybody in your family will enjoy.
What’s Your Lifestyle?
When you change your lifestyle to adapt to your new house, you know you’ve made the wrong decision. It’s your new house that should suit (and even improve) your lifestyle. Keep that in mind from as early as choosing a location. If you’re raising a family that enjoys a mix of urban life and nature, go for places like Townsville.
Knowing your preferred ambiance simplifies your search. New homes there will most likely aim to accommodate families like yours.
Take your children along to viewings so that you can better gauge everyone’s reaction. It will also help you get a better feel of how everybody moves and whether there’s enough space for your daily activities.
Do you host parties or receive guests regularly? Is an open floor plan suitable for the family, or do they prefer partitions to avoid distractions when studying or watching a movie? Consider these minute details. No matter how attractive a floor plan is, it’s not for you if it doesn’t benefit your lifestyle.
Do You Spend Time Outdoors?
Avoid choosing houses with substantial outdoor spaces if you can’t commit to them. Lawns and flower bushes won’t trim themselves, and half-hearted gardening can ruin its aesthetic. The same applies to swimming pools and other amenities.
This is not to say you should skip houses with outdoor spaces in their floor plans. You only need to make sure you buy what you’re capable of caring for based on your availability.
If you’re into nature but don’t have time for extensive maintenance, go for a house with a lanai or small porch. Buy potted plants that are easy to care for.
One reason to invest in extra space is to have room for improvement. You might want to extend your house or construct a separate structure a couple of years from now. Do this with a realistic budget in mind, though. You won’t want to consider improvements now if it pushes your mortgage plan to sweep your bank account clean early on.
What Will the Future Be Like?
It’s always good to consider the future but in practical ways. You might be moving into a new house when your children are about to go to college. This means you can focus more on your preferences since it will be you and your spouse living there most of the time.
Couples with toddlers need to keep in mind children grow up fast, and they’ll want to have separate rooms soon. If your knees aren’t as sturdy as they used to be, a bedroom on the first floor is a good idea for when you can’t take the stairs anymore.
Look into the future, but not so far off that you’re making costly decisions. A lot of things can still happen, and you don’t want to be spending on uncertainties.
Even your dream house now can stop feeling so dreamy after a while. Your needs will change, and so will your preferences. What’s important is that you turn your new house into a home. Make it your goal to find a floor plan that you feel you can work with, and the rest will follow.
