10 Tips for Helping Young Couples to Be Prepared to Buy Their First House
1. Young couples need to save money for a down payment on a house. Young couples aren’t prepared to buy a house if they don’t have enough money for a down payment. If they need to borrow the down payment money from relatives or friends for the down payment then they really aren’t prepared money wise to buy a house.
2. You two need a savings account that has money in it for house repairs and any extra appliances. You might need to buy a refrigerator, washer and dryer, and anything else that might not be included in the house. It is important to remember all the extra costs. You need to have a few thousand dollars saved at least in the house repair savings account before buying a house.
3. Can you afford house insurance each year? It is important that you two can afford to pay for house insurance. You need to save money before you buy a house so you can afford to get house insurance. You must have house insurance just like insurance on vehicles. Make sure that you can save enough money to pay for the house insurance each year.
4. Can you afford to pay the taxes on a house each year? This another an extra cost of owning a house instead of renting an apartment. You need to save money aside each year to pay the taxes on the house. All these costs add up to quite a large amount each year so be prepared.
5. Make sure to only buy a house that you can afford the mortgage payments on. Don’t let a real estate agent talk you into a buying a big expensive house despite how much they tell you that you afford it. If you two had trouble in the past paying the rent payment on an apartment then you probably aren’t ready to buy a house yet. A house will end up costing more money than a apartment will each year.
6. You need to make enough money in order to cover the extra heat costs and air condition costs and power. Before you even buy a house make sure to figure out how much the house is really going to cost you each month the total amount. You want to add up the an estimate of the heat costs, and the power costs and everything else associated with it such as water bill.
7. Don’t buy a house that will end up making your budget tight. If the budget is going to be way too tight each month then you shouldn’t buy the house in the first place. A tight budget means that you can’t afford the house due to any extra expenses that might happen such as car repairs, or medical expenses. Make sure to include all every bill in your household budget including the car payments, credit card debt, and other bills such as student loans.
8. If you are going to be broke right after moving into the new house then you can’t afford the house. It isn’t any fun being in a house that you can’t afford to buy furniture or any other nice stuff to put it in for a month. Don’t let the real estate agent fool you into thinking that you can afford a house when you really can’t if the price is too high.
9. Only buy a house if you have no other large amounts of debt. Don’t buy a house if you can only afford to make the minimum payments on the credit cards. Don’t buy a house if you can’t afford to make double car payments. If you already struggle to pay other bills then whatever you do don’t a buy unless you don’t have any large amounts of debt.
10. Get a 15 year mortgage loan on a house if you can afford it. You will be able to pay off your fast pretty quickly. After the 15 year mortgage loan is paid off then you be able to save a large amount of money each month and your house will have a large amount of equity by then.
