Big House Blues — What We Learned From Buying Then Selling an Oversized House
In early 2016, we moved from a 900 sqft cottage, to a 3000 sqft new construction home with 5 beds and 4 baths. Business was good, and we felt like we’d made it!
18 months later we had to sell that house for one half the size. I’m still not sure if I would call these mistakes, but we’ve definitely learned from it all. Plus, things are going well enough now that I can sit here and write this.
Things change (Fast)
When we signed up to build the big house it was just my wife and I. The day after we signed the contract, we found out we were pregnant. 10 months into living there we found out we were pregnant with our second child. In between all this, my wife became a stay at home mom, and my previous business began to slow down. All this added up to higher expenses, less income, and more stress for us.
Don’t lose your frugal discipline
My wife and I have never spent much money. We justified buying an oversized house by saying that we would grow into it and never have to move again. We learned that buying a nice, new, big house also requires expensive furniture and decor to match.
You can’t predict the future
We thought we would never have to move again. I think in today’s fast-changing economy this is a tough assumption to make for most people. Things always change.
Big utility bills
Even though this house was built with cutting edge efficiency, the utilities were double the bills at our small house. Even with the three of us, there was a lot of uninhabited space in that 3,000 sqft house.
You can salvage bad decisions
The good news is that we were able to sell our house very quickly and at a good price. We’re so thankful that we were able to come out of this stressful situation mostly unscathed. We moved into a house roughly half the size of our “too big house.” We even turned lemons into lemonade by “flipping” our next house to ourselves.
No one really cares if you downsize
One thing we both worried about, was what certain people would think. What will our parents think? What will our neighbors think? What will our friends think? We were worried people would think we had failed.
I think this is pretty natural. The truth is, most people probably didn’t think about it for more than a few seconds. They have their own problems to handle.
A supportive spouse is worth more than gold
I wish you could’ve smelt the house I asked my wife to move into. The previous occupants had 8 dogs, so just imagine… She had faith in what we were trying to accomplish, and was totally supportive of our downsize.
Figure out what’s important to you
To be honest, we could have found a way to keep our “too big house.” We would’ve both had to find new jobs, and rework our finances.
Deep down, having a big house was just less important to us than spending time with our children and doing work we love. Instead of burning through our savings paying bills on a house that was too big for us, we made the decision to step forward with a real estate career while eliminating a financial burden.