In an earlier blog post I told the story of when my husband and I bought our first home.  Now that we are getting ready to move from there, I've started thinking...if we were starting over, would we still buy the same condo?  To gain some insight, I logged in to my MLS and took a look back at what other condos sold during the same time we purchased ours.

And what did I find?  Well, there were lots of options at the time that we should have explored.   Some condos had the same (or more) space for lower prices and were still close to a train station (the most important factor for us).  There were even some condos right down the street from us that were almost $100,000 less than what we paid.  Granted, those condos didn't have as much space, but they were still larger than our Manhattan apartment, so they would have seemed big to us.    The only big difference between our condo and the competition was that ours was brand new, which I now know isn't always as great as you would expect.

So, do I have buyer's remorse 6.5 years later?  Absolutely not.  Our condo has been a great home for us over these years and that's really the most important thing.  And if we had bought something smaller, we likely would have moved a few years ago before our son turned into an over-active pre-schooler.  For us, being able to stay in one place for almost 7 years was a good thing (we'd both moved way too often through our college & early post-college years) and I'm glad that we were able to move when we wanted to and not because we had to move.

What can you learn from my experience?  Don't make the same mistakes we did.  Be sure you're making the right decision for you by:

• Exploring all of your options - look at different styles, sizes and price ranges
• Thinking of it as home, not just an investment
• Buying for the long term so you won't feel like you've outgrown it before 3 - 5 years
• Planning for the inevitable - taxes will go up, common charges may raise, insurance will increase - make sure these cost increases won't cost you your home

Take all of these factors into account so you'll be making a choice that makes you happy and makes good sense.

As I mentioned in my first post, my husband and I bought our first home - a condo - six years ago in February 2002.  Here's our story...

Our original plan was to rent an apartment so we could get used to the area.  We didn't even think about buying until the first real estate agent we talked to asked us if we had been qualified for a mortgage.  Boy was she a smart one  - we got on the phone with the mortgage broker she recommended and were qualified for a mortgage right away just in case we saw something we wanted to buy.  Although we were qualified for up to $300,000 we told her we only wanted to spend about $150 - $200K to stay well within our budget.

1. We didn't even attempt to negotiate the builder's price, ask for upgrades or changes to the standard fixtures.  The builder's agent told us the price was what was listed and we believed him (we later learned that other buyers had negotiated lower prices and some upgrades).
2. We didn't do a Home Inspection - it was new, we thought, and the builder has to give us a 1 year warranty, so what could be wrong?  Even though nothing major has gone wrong in 6 years - a home inspection would have found some issues that we didn't find until well after the 1st year and would have taught us some valuable information about home maintenance.
3. We didn't really explore all of our options and we could have gotten more for less.
4. We had no idea how many things could change or go wrong with a new condo association.  Our common charges jumped up by $20/month as soon as the association was formed, we've had numerous increases since then totaling over $80/month along with paying almost an extra year's worth of common charges in special assessments for emergency repairs and budget shortfalls over the 6 years we've lived here.  There's no guarantee that things like that wouldn't have happened in a more established complex, but a long financial history gives more chance for things to remain stable.