Homes
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: The New Addition to Our Basement
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: My Most Surprising Revelation From Observing My Neighbors
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Hosting Our First Guest in the House
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Average Annual Homeowner Expenses vs. Mine
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: Yes, Your Payments Can Still Go Up
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: How the Pros We Worked With Are Still Helping Us
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…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: One Year as Homeowners
It feels absolutely crazy to say but it’s now been a full year since we closed on our house. Perhaps it doesn’t feel as long since we didn’t actually move in until closer to Christmas — but, either way, time has flown. Before my wife and I got married, her mother said something to her…
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Lessons From a First-Time Home Buyer: How FICO’s New Tool Could Benefit Mortgage Applicants
Applying and getting approved for a mortgage can be a lengthy process. As I learned, this is especially true if you’re self-employed — but it could also be a challenge given your credit situation. On that note, FICO is apparently rolling out a new tool to mortgage lenders that will hopefully enable them to give…
