I'm a First Time Home Buyer and I REGRET My Decision

Oh, first-time homebuyers. Oh my gosh, you are still feeling major regret after buying your house. And I totally understand that. So in this video, I want to share with you a couple of posts that I found on Reddit of people who are feeling major, major regrets buying their homes. These were first-time homebuyers. And I'm going to share with you what I think they could do to get past that feeling of that buyer's remorse and how to embrace their home. So I hope you find this information helpful and it will help you avoid having homebuyer regret yourself. So let's get into it. I totally understand how stressful this is for first-time homebuyers, pretty much any homebuyers, but particularly first-time homebuyers. Being in this career for almost 10 years now, I've seen it all. I've seen a lot and I've felt the stress. I have just, oh, I've witnessed a lot of distress that buyers experience as they're going through this process of buying a house. And unfortunately, remorse does kick in after one buys a home. And that's a completely normal thing. I mean, look, you just went through all of this effort to find a house, to compete against other buyers, to go through the whole process of getting under contract, the home inspections, the appraisal, all that stuff. And then once you're in it, you're like, oh my God, what did I just do? I hear that a lot. So let's get into these stories from Reddit. You know, I love me some Reddit. I want to share what these people experience with buying their first home. And I'll tell you what I think they can do to overcome that buyer's remorse. The first post here, the title is first-time homebuyer. And I regret my decision. Maybe I can get some perspective here. I bought the house a few months ago, seven months. I think I paid too much for it. I can afford it, but I'm realizing how much I don't see the house as someplace that is home. I see it as just more things to fix or that needs to be improved. The carpets are white and shag from the seventies, I imagine. I would want to replace those. The windows, the same thing. Furnace and air conditioner are 20 years old, but still working. I knew about the HVAC at the beginning, but didn't realize how living in it makes you realize how much stuff needs to happen to get it up to date. I think before they sold the house, they replaced the appliances quickly. So my microwave cuts off seeing the stove dials. That's a little weird. I had an inspection and they identified the major stuff, but it is different to live in the house versus inspecting it. The only good thing is to quiet. I used to live in apartments before this, and I really don't like noises I could hear from the neighbors all around. Right now, I'm contemplating at putting the house back on the market because that is all this house means to me right now. Maybe someone else has some ideas of what I can do. First of all, do not put the house back on the market. Not right now. Do not do that because you may not get the price that you paid for, and you're also going to be paying money out of pocket to sell that house. It's going to cost you. So don't be running to put the for sale sign on your yard right away. Do not do that. Now, as far as you feeling like you overpaid, this is what a lot of people feel these days in this market because everybody has to go above asking price. I'm working with buyers right now. They're in the same boat. They don't want to go too far over asking because that fear of overpaying. I am totally there with them. I understand that, but here's the thing. If you're going to live in the house for a long time, and I'm talking 15, 20 years, that home is going to appreciate in value over time. So by the time you go to sell it in say 15, 20 years, you're probably going to make a little bit money on that house because it increased in value. Now, unless there's a major economic meltdown somewhere in this country or in the world that could, God forbid, cause a housing crash, there's always that possibility, and I have to say that to cover myself. But for the most part, real estate does appreciate in value. So when you feel like you overpaid, you can't look at it like that. You're paying what the market is bearing right now at this time. So if you're in it for a long time, you are going to recoup that back, and then some when you go to sell it, like I said, 15, 20 years down the road. Now, as far as the projects that they're talking about here in this house, this guy's complaining about the white shag carpet, the windows, all these little things that one observes once they've been living in the house, and they start to panic and say, my God, what did I just do? I like this line that he said that it's different to live in the house versus inspecting it. That is key, and I'm going to keep that. I'm going to store that in the memory bank so I can share that line with my clients because it's true. Now, things are going to come up in the home inspection. You're going to think, okay, this is what's only wrong with the house. So we're going to have the seller give me a concession or possibly repair it, and we'll be good to go. I'll move in the house. Everything's going to be fine. No, no. When you become a homeowner, maintenance comes along with owning a home, and this is what a lot of people fail to understand once they're in a home, and this is why they get overwhelmed and upset and feeling all of this regret because they feel like they're throwing their money out the window because there's so many things that they have to fix on the house. I totally get that, but now here's the thing. What they can do is just prioritize. So if they don't like that white shag carpet, steam clean it for now, and then in a year or two, you can go ahead and replace that. Don't feel like you have to jump in and fix and repair everything on the house. You have to prioritize. Prioritize the projects. Once you have those identified, you know what you want to do. You want to repair, replace to make it your own. Then you will feel more in control of what you want to do with the house, and you have a plan, and you'll get the house looking to the way you want it. It'll be your style, and it'll be all you. So that's the goal. You want to make it your home. Right now, the home doesn't feel like yours. You just moved in, and you just see a big pile of stuff that needs to get done. Prioritize, put it in a list, bang out those projects, and over time, you will see that you're going to appreciate the house even more when things start to come along. Hey, as you know, I'm connected to a lot of agents across the country. If you are buying or selling a home in your area, and you need to be connected to one of those agents, click the link down below, fill out the form, and I will get back to you within 24 hours, and I'll get you connected to an agent in your area. This next post, it's a little long. I found it a little sad at first, but I do have some good feedback for them, so buckle up. Let's listen to this one. The title is Strong Buyer Remorse and Feeling Depressed. I live in the South Bay of San Francisco Bay Area, and the housing market in the area is crazy this year. Almost every single house without major defects will have bidding wars, and the transacted price will be much higher than the asking. I had purchased a house in this situation, winning a bidding war, but kept feeling strong buyer remorse and depression ever since then for the following reasons. Number one, overpay. I always feel I have overpaid a lot for the house, especially in such a crazy market. To get the house, we were in the bidding war. However, now I always doubt whether there was truly a bidding war or it's just seller agent's bluff. The house itself is not very popular. It doesn't have a great floor plan. It has too many bedrooms, but each of them is quite small. Our initial bid was 10% over asking, and the seller agent pushed us to bid higher, saying that there were better offers with concrete numbers. We added some extra, but once we won, I just couldn't help thinking that we added too much, that the seller agent might be bluffing, that it will be impossible to resell the house to the price we paid in the near future. Reason number two, the seller got a two-month free rent back. In order to get the house, we have agreed on the terms that the seller has asked a buyer to provide a two-month free rent back. At that moment, I felt we have a place to live, and it would make our offer more attractive. However, now I feel I underestimated the impacts. We cannot do the remodeling upgrades when the contract is closed, and we cannot sell our current house for a long period of time. We are also paying the mortgage tax insurance while we cannot live there. Reason number three, the house is old and the floor plan is not ideal. The house is well-maintained, no major issues from the inspection report, but still quite old with 60 years. There were minor issues here and there, like no ground for the outlets, uneven floors, or cracking sound somewhere. Just feel we would spend a lot of money fixing issues here and there. This probably applies to all older houses though. As mentioned earlier, it has too many small bedrooms, that I feel a reduced number of bedrooms with larger sizes would be more ideal. The house definitely has its pros, like its location slash neighborhood, it's great schools, it's a huge lot, bigger living square footage compared to our current home, etc. My wife loves it even though she thinks we overpaid as well. Every time I want to back out, she always said that we should give it more time and see if we could embrace the life change. I consciously know I should look ahead instead of getting into the buyer remorse, but I just couldn't. I feel the buyer remorse really pulled me down and affected my wellness. Is this common for home buyers? How to get rid of these bad emotions? Well, there's a lot to unpack here. So again, let's talk about the first reason he feels he overpaid. Like I just talked about with the first post. Look, I hate to say this term, but the market is the market, right? So what you paid for the house, that's what the house is worth in this current market. Now, I want to touch on the comment he made where he felt that the seller's agent might've been bluffing. It's very rare that that would happen. Now, you know, I talk about real estate agents here and the shady tactics that they can do. Does it happen? It does happen. It does. But don't assume every agent is going to do that. If you were working with a real estate agent to help you buy the place, your real estate agent probably would've been able to pick up on the fact that there may not have been other offers on that house. So if you were working with a real estate agent, they should tell you, be honest with you that, no, this is true. There's a lot of offers on this house or no, I do think they're bluffing. So I don't know if this person worked with a real estate agent. If they did, I would hope that agent guided them and assured them that, yeah, there are multiple offers on this house. Now, the comment he made how this seller's agent came back and said they have other offers because you come up a little bit more. That happens. And this happened a lot with my clients where you're right there, you have very similar offer prices, and maybe the other offer's a little bit higher, but your terms are better. Now, typically in that case, sometimes the sellers would say, you know what? The heck with it. We'll go with the lower price or the better terms. But in this bidding war situation, I know it doesn't sound fair, but sometimes they like your terms. Can you come up a little bit more to match this other price? It happens. It happened to my clients a lot during the pandemic. And some of them said, yes, some of them said, no, I'm not doing it. So don't assume the seller's making anything up and making up that there was offers on the house. Don't assume that because it'd be really stupid if they were to do that. They're getting a lot of trouble for it. And look, I get it. I'm a very suspicious person. I question everything. I totally understand where he's coming from. So I get that. But I can tell you being in this business, more than likely, they had multiple offers on that house. So nobody was trying to pull one over on him. Now, let's talk about the two-month free rent back to the seller. Now, this house is in California. And from what I know, because I know two people that moved from California, moved here to New Jersey, they had to do this when they sold their house during the pandemic. It was very common. When you sold your house in California, when you closed, you're leasing that back for free to the seller for however long they needed. Very common thing. And if you're from California, you're watching this, do me a favor, comment, let me know. Is that still the case today? Because I know three years ago, that was the case. And I know why he's freaking out over this, because he's got to pay the mortgage, taxes, insurance on the home while the seller is living there. He's not getting any rent money back from the seller. I totally understand that. So in that case, I would have taken a step back and crunched your numbers to make sure you would have been able to manage that, to reassure yourself that you can swing paying the mortgage on your current house and then paying the mortgage on the new house. It would just help keep your stress level down a little bit while that seller is still living in your house that you just bought. Now, let's talk about how the house is old and the floor plan is not ideal. Now, first of all, he says the house is old, it's 60 years old. 60 years old is not an old house. 100 years or more, that's an older house. 60 years, no. As long as the house has good bones, there's potential there. There's a lot that you can do to it. He's complaining that there are six bedrooms, six small bedrooms in this house. What I would be doing if that was me, I would knock down the wall between two of the bedrooms, make it one big bedroom. And now you're down to a normal four bedroom house. I don't know, call me crazy. That's what I would do. But let's focus on the positives. They like the location, the neighborhood. It's in a great school district. The living square footage space is bigger than their current home. And it's also on a larger lot, so they have a bigger yard. These were the things that were important to them. This is what they liked about the house. That's what you should be focusing on and reminding yourself. And to go and think about selling it, like he's already said, he already made that comment, like the first poster. He's saying, I feel like I overpaid and I'm not going to be able to make that money back if I was to sell it in the near future. You cannot think like that, just like the first post. You have to think about this for long-term, all right? If you're going to be living in this house for 15, 20 years, don't worry about what you paid now because the home will appreciate in value, okay? Focus on the positive as to why you bought the house. Story time from me. The reason why I picked this story because it sounded very similar to our situation when we bought our house here in Jersey 12 years ago. I did not love my house. Really? I did not love it at all. What did I love? The location, the neighborhood, the school district. Those were the three main components, what we were going for when we were looking for the next house. Those are the most important things. The house, look, we were like, okay, we'll deal with it. If the house is a really nice house, okay, that's icing on the cake. Well, yeah. So once we bought the house, yeah, I was kind of hating it. I'm not going to lie. I did not love the house at all. It took us seven years to decide what we were going to do with the house, what renovations needed to be done, all the things. And look, it turned out to be great. We started it after seven years. Over a two to three-year period, we got everything done that we needed to get done, and now kind of liking my house. I love my house now. I love how it's turned out. But again, we had to keep reminding ourselves we moved here for number one, the schools, number two, the neighborhood and the location. The house, you can always change, you can change the inside, you can change the outside of the house. You can't change your location. So that was the most important thing for us. And that's what this person needs to be doing to embrace that house. Remind yourself, what did you love about the house? Why did you buy it? What was important about it that made you buy it? The more you remind yourself about that, the more you're going to feel better about it, and you're going to embrace it, and you'll get over that regret a little bit easier. So just a reminder, when you're buying a house, and once you close, this is completely normal. Regret remorse is completely normal when buying a home. So please don't get yourself wrapped up in it. It does pass over time. And I hope the things that I'm sharing with you today will help you get through that if you do feel that after you buy your house. And make sure you're working with a good agent that will walk you through it and talk you through it to help you get to the other side and not feel that home buyer regret. Another thing I wanted to tell you is there are people who bought their homes and did some renovations, and they ended up regretting those renovations. And if you want to know more about it, you can watch this video right here. Thank you so much for watching me today to get your dose of real estate reality. My name is Jackie Baker, and I will see you next time.