Does this house fit me?

When I take a buyer to look at houses, I can tell by watching their faces as they look around that they are trying to imagine what life might be like if they lived there. I like to advise my clients to consider whether or not a house is a good fit for your current life plus one significant change. For a single person, that change might be getting married. For a married couple, a dog (or two) or having a baby (or two!) might be their next logical step.

If the house is only good for life "right now" and with any major change in life, it wouldn't work, it may not be a good fit. I tell my clients, a house should be big enough to accommodate your needs for the next several years; the worst thing in the world would be to buy a home, and after a couple of years, have to move again. I tell them, if you have to call me to sell this place, I am a very expensive phone call!

You might be wondering, how often does this come up? I end up having this conversation with clients more often than you might think, because of the very common quandary between two very different places: the little perfect place and the big ugly place. These two places exist in every price range. For example, here in Oak Park, when looking for a "starter home," that is, a home on the lower end of the price range for single family homes, buyers are often confronted with two very different kinds of homes to choose from: there is the super-cute home, usually occupied by a young family, that is darling and decorated with current colors and styles, and then, there is the not-cute-at-all home, that was decorated by the owners when they bought it 25 years ago, which means every single room needs to be redone, including paint, lighting, flooring, plus kitchen, bathrooms, windows, exterior, landscaping.....

This is the fork in the road: do you want to move into a true turnkey place, put your stuff away and start enjoying home ownership? Or, do you have lots of energy, ideas and savings, and prefer to take on the projects necessary to restore the home to its original beauty and put your personal stamp on it? Here is where watching too much HGTV can get you into trouble: there are countless shows about renovating your home on this channel, and many of them provide budgets for those renovations. To a one, they are completely unrealistic; don't ask me where they get their materials, but the idea that you can demolish and renovate a kitchen with custom cabinets, quartz countertops and stainless appliances for $20,000 in our neighborhood is just plain laughable.

Here is another problem: renovations are done with cash or a home equity line of credit, you cannot simply borrow "extra" to get them done immediately. The idea that if you have a budget of $500,000, you can buy a home for $400,000 and have $100,000 "left over" for renovations isn't the way it works in real life, although they may it look that way on shows like Fixer Upper. Talk to your agent. We have seen it all and then some, and we are terrific sources of information for estimating the realistic costs of updating your home. I will admit, I may feel like a bit of a dream crusher sometimes, but I would rather give you the information you need to make an informed decision.