Pensacola's Real Estate Blog: First Time Home Buyers...Stepping Stone or Home of my Dreams?

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

First Time Home Buyers...Stepping Stone or Home of my Dreams?

Home of your dreams is the 5 bedroom 4 bath home on the lake you picture yourself in when you close your eyes and see the perfect Christmas. Mmm the smell of fresh baked cookies! The stepping stone home is the 2 bedroom 2 bath home in town that is a little less than perfect. Aah the fresh smell of paint!
As I look at homes with first time home buyers I find that usually the expectation is set at the home of our dreams.

Let's meet these first time home buyers...I usually find they are a young couple who have a child and are thinking they will be having more. They may even be thinking mom may be staying home to raise the children. As they drive up, our young first time home buyers get out of a three month old minivan, still equipped with that "new car" smell. Our young couple tells me they are looking at some where around the 2000 square foot range and they will have to have four bedrooms with a big back yard.

Keep in mind real estate is usually the largest investments you will ever make, so planning and consulting is a great move before you purchase. In our example above we find that this young couple is "ready" to take the next big step...buy a home! As I step back and look I can see we need to asses our goals and sharpen our view to keep the final goal in mind..."The dream home". Every long journey starts with a step and sometimes there are a lot of steps on our journey. Here is where there seems to come disappointment in the eyes of our young couple, though there need not be. They find they need to back down to that 2 bed 2 bath home and make it a stepping stone on the road to that dream house on the lake. A few points we mentioned earlier, they really want to have mom stay home and raise the kiddos so there may soon be a loss of income, getting into a big mortgage is very likely to kill that dream. They have also already obligated themselves to a "new car smell" payment. This in and of itself my not be a bad thing but you must keep your dept to income ratio in check, ie enough money at the end of the month to meet your obligations and still have money for the grocery store.

So Skip what are you saying they can't have their dream home? No, not at all...they just have to wait a little bit so they can save up and maybe even use the equity they are gaining in the starter home to step up to a little bit better home in a few years. Knowledge is the key...So if you are a first time home buyer or maybe just stepping up give me a call, lets take the next step together!