Home Buying: Lessons Learned

I spent the last month viewing homes, talking to lenders, and reading home buyer guides and have come to a few broad generalizations about purchasing a home.

• For the first few houses, you enjoy the process because you are looking at cosmetic features. But by the third house you realize you need to focus on the structural and design elements of the house, otherwise you may end up living in a carnival fun house infested with termites.
• Nearly every single house has a major flaw. The flaw will fall into one or more of the following categories:
• water damage, leaks
  
• mold
• cracks (in the sidewalks, foundation, walls, ceilings, etc.)
  
• termites (and other pests)
• bad location (our favorite house was under our budget but next to the only freeway in Blacksburg, so we had to dump it from our wish list)
  
• ancient interiors (original 1971 carpeting throughout the entire house)
• nutty architectural design (for example, the dishwasher is located 7 feet away from the kitchen sink)
• the seller designed a specialty feature for their own pleasure, but you don't need it (for example a swimming pool, two stove tops or a heavy marble water sculpture)
• If a house has a basement, it had a flood or leak at some point in its history
• Leaks and floods lead to mold
• During tours, you spend a lot of time looking at the ceiling for leaks and cracks
• Sellers place area rugs on top of carpeting to hide stains
• College students abuse their rental properties 10 times worse than I remember from my own college days
• Americans have really cut back on their smoking. We didn't see a single property owned by smokers
  
• Pets go happy loco when random visitors enter the house in the middle of the work day
• The home buying process is expensive and overwhelming because you have to work with at least seven different people. Personalities we have worked with both directly and indirectly include the sellers, the selling real estate agent, our buying agent, our mortgage lender, the property surveyor, the home inspector, and the attorney. I have worked on genome projects that involved fewer people.
  

The last and most important lesson I learned was that if a house didn't stroke my ego, I couldn't bring myself to even consider it. You know how everyone tells you that "when you find your dream house, you just know."? Well, it turns out that the reason "you just know" is because your ego leaps up and stands at attention. Your ego is awakened by meeting something-a house- it recognizes as itself.

Don't be fooled into thinking you are any different. Your ego house will echo back to you the ideas and themes which you believe to be true about yourself. It will be spacious and bright (or maybe sweet and cozy). Your ego house will be colorful and whimsical (or reliably neutral). It will be surrounded by rolling hills with grazing horses (or by fun and young college students). Whatever it is, the house that makes you throw down your life's savings and commit to a thirty year loan will feed your ego, strengthen your identity and reaffirm your concept of self.

In my case, the interior of my ego house is a 1990s era Miami-vice themed tri-level. The Miami-vice theme is the first thing that I am going to redecorate. I consider my interior scheme to look like the set on Oprah when she does A-list celebrity interviews with multiple actors crowded onto the two couches, if that makes any sense.

The backyard of my ego house is a Jefferson Natural Forest inspired child's playland. There are more than a dozen mature pine trees in the backyard with a tinkling tiny koi pond. I plan on changing very little in the backyard, except for hanging up a hammock between the trees. I never pictured myself as an owner of trees, especially not the owner of a micro-forest, and I think that appealed to my ego more than anything.

I am still embedded in the home buying process and not sure where this path will lead, but I am excited and hopeful that if not this house, then the next house will be my dream house. Wish me luck. Feel free to share your dream house/ego house features in the comments section.