Category: Homes

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The Truth About Managing Risk as a Homeowner

by Kyle BurbankApr 30, 2025

Ever since we first toured the home that we'd go on to make our own, there was something literally looming over the house that worried me a bit: a giant tree in the backyard. Specifically, as I've learned, it's a silver maple tree — and, while it does provide some great shade, watching the branches blow in the wind does lead to some anxiety. That's why, at long last, we...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Announcing My New (and Free) Homebuyer's Guide

by Kyle BurbankApr 16, 2025

For the past 18 months, I've been writing about my experience 1) buying a home and then 2) discovering everything that being a homeowner entails. Along the way, I've covered some topics that I'd never heard anyone else really talk about and have developed a few tips that I think others could learn from. That's why I've now compiled the highlights of my experience into a new guide So, You...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The New Addition to Our Basement

by Kyle BurbankApr 2, 2025

Last month, I shared how we had hosted our first overnight guest — which also meant finally making use of our finished basement. Well, as we continue to look for ways to utilize the space (after our initial plan of putting our couch down there was scuttled), we recently started the process of turning it into a gym. Okay, "gym" is a bit generous as we really only intend to...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: My Most Surprising Revelation From Observing My Neighbors

by Kyle BurbankMar 19, 2025

In past installments of this series, I've discussed how game-changing having an attached garage has been. On a basic level, coming from an apartment complex, it's nice not to have anyone complain about where we park for any reason—or having to move our car last minute for some event or maintenance. It's also great not having to worry about running from our car to the house during heavy rain or...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Hosting Our First Guest in the House

by Kyle BurbankMar 5, 2025

After more than a year in our new home, we finally hosted our first guest last month. While the ability to have overnight guests was a partial factor in why we elected to upgrade to owning a home versus renting a one-bedroom apartment, the amount of time that it took to actually have someone over is more a testament to just how few people we know. In any case, while...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Average Annual Homeowner Expenses vs. Mine

by Kyle BurbankFeb 12, 2025

In one of my daily searches for financial news recently, I came across a report from the site Real Estate Witch (which is owned by Clever Real Estate) detailing how much the average American homeowner spends on their house — not even including their mortgage. What it found was, heading into 2025, the average per year is a whopping $24,529. That figure is up significantly from the $17,958 annual average...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Yes, Your Payments Can Still Go Up

by Kyle BurbankDec 11, 2024

When we decided to ditch apartment life in favor of buying a house, one of the motivating factors was that, while rents tend to rise from year to year, our mortgage wouldn't. Of course, while that's true of our fixed-rate mortgage itself, that doesn't mean that our monthly payments won't increase. In fact, as we reached our first year anniversary in this home, we're now going to have to start...

Homes

Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: How the Pros We Worked With Are Still Helping Us

by Kyle BurbankNov 27, 2024

A few months ago, I wrote about how the professionals we choose to work with when buying our home made a huge difference and made our experience a positive one. Now, one year later, I'm somewhat surprised to say that they continue to help us out on a regular basis despite the transaction that first brought us together being well behind us. So, between that milestone and with it being...