Buying your first home is exhilarating, frightening, overwhelming and life-changing all at once. During the hectic months of buying, and in the first months of settling into your new home, you experience emotions and events that only a new homeowner can understand. Here are seven feelings only new homeowners will understand.
1. The Totally “Adult” Feeling of Buying a Home
Whether you’re in your early twenties or late seventies, buying a home for the first time provokes a giddy sense of true adulthood. Owning a piece of property is unlike any other purchase and, while the path to buying a home can be complicated and trying, the ceremonial handing over of the keys is priceless.
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2. The Excitement of Setting Up For Your First Housewarming Party
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Your first house party is maybe the best party you will host in your new home. You will buy too much food, create a three-day-long music playlist for a four-hour party, and invite every person you ever met in your entire life. It will feel like your sixth grade birthday party all over again as you impatiently wait for each guest to arrive.
3. Shopping Every. Single. Day.
It’s incredible just how much stuff you need when buy a home and, a lot of the times, you don’t know what you need until you need it. If you find yourself stopping at the store five times a week to pick up a shower curtain here and a laundry basket there, you’re not alone.
4. A Voracious Passion for Decorating
Prior to purchasing a home, you may have never stepped foot into a Pier 1 Imports or similar home decorating store. Once you become a new homeowner, you’ll be drawn to them like a magnet. A sale on curtains? Two-for-one decorative pillows? The sales are calling your name and you can’t resist finding new excuses to redecorate your home.
5. The Joy of Never Having to See a Landlord Again
Having a landlord is similar to living next door to your parents. It feels as if you aren’t truly an adult because there is still someone looking over your every move. When you own your own place, you can make a mess and not have to worry about any judgment. The irony is, with your own place you will have a newfound respect for keeping everything tidy.
Having a landlord is similar to living next door to your parents. It feels as if you aren’t truly an adult because there is still someone looking over your every move. When you own your own place, you can make a mess and not have to worry about any judgment. The irony is, with your own place you will have a newfound respect for keeping everything tidy.
6. The Fear of Anything Getting Dirty
Buying your first home is like buying a new car. You set rules (no food in the car!) that you’ll break in a few weeks. But until then, you are dead set on keeping your new piece of property in the best shape of its life. You hunt dust down in its tracks, wipe down the smallest of water drops, and keep your windows so clean you almost walk into them. There’s a good chance you will vacuum your floors and scrub your countertops more in your first few months of living in your home than you will the entire following year.
7. That Feeling When Something Breaks for the First Time
When you were renting, you had a landlord. Now, you are your landlord. There is nothing more frightening when something breaks for the first time in your home, whether it’s your dishwasher overflowing with soapy water or a sprinkler head malfunctioning. Once you survive your first incident, you’ll feel like a true Mr. or Mrs. Fix-It.
Buying your first home is one of life’s big moments. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and years down the road, you’ll laugh at all the times you cried. Welcome to homeownership!
Note: This is a guest post; the views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or position of Redfin.
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