The Saga Continues

Home ownership is not for the faint of heart. 

As a Realtor, I see how hard it is to find "the home" and then get all the paperwork done before you are given the keys to your new home.  Right now, I have a client that is supposed to close on a house on Monday, but their paperwork has still not been cleared because the bank is waiting to get the appraisal report back from the appraiser (who completed the appraisal last Friday!).  To say my buyers are on pins and needles is an understatement.  Especially since they have to travel here to get to closing and they have a child in middle school that either needs to skip school or find a friend's house to stay while they are gone. 

I've seen it time and time again, no matter the stress leading up to closing day, the buyers are so excited to have a place to call their own.  Once those keys are placed in their hands, the troubles they just overcame are forgotten.  After all, they have a home that someone else can't tell them what to do (except if they live in an HOA where they restrict what you can do to the outside of the property), right?

Last fall I learned that's a bit of a fallacy.  My insurance company was able to force me to replace my roof (or else they would drop my insurance).  If I didn't have insurance on the house, my mortgage company would have forced me to pay for their policy (which cost 3X as much and only covered the structure of the house and not any of our stuff).

We closed on our house almost 3 years ago.  Since then, we have repaired or replaced:

• Pool pump
• Kitchen sink (rusting and ruining counter) and kitchen faucet (leaking)
• Roof
• Air Conditioner
• Carpet through pretty much the entire house
• Washer & Dryer
• Refrigerator
• Oven element
• "Storage Room" flooding with water when it rained heavily

And last night we had septic water start backing up into one of our showers.  We're praying it's a simple plugged pipe.  If it's not that, at a minimum we will need the septic pumped but we could also need to have our septic tank and or drain field replaced.  Add to that the fact that we have a detached pole barn that is beginning to fall apart and we've got more expenses on the horizon.

Like I said in the beginning... home ownership is not for the faint of heart.  We will get through this.  We always have.  But for those of you out there that think you'll get those keys and life will be easy after that.  Not necessarily true.  It takes work to keep the house in good shape.  It takes money (sometimes lots of it) to be able to sell your house a few years down the road and gain some equity (and that's not even guaranteed).  But it is nice being able to have a place that, for the most part, you can call your own and decorate it as you see fit.