Chill. It’s not a great time to buy a house anyway, and maybe you’ll get to those renovations in a few years. But I sympathize. Used to live in a 100 year old house then moved to a 10 year old one

If it makes you feel any better, my 1993 home is a money pit too. It's shocking how many things can go wrong with it.

I kind of agree that 2 years is the low point.

But the real lesson you learned here is that everyone underestimated how much it costs to live in, maintain and improve a house because you’re trying to stretch your purchase budget as far as you can.

Next time, if you can, lower your purchase price and have a bigger budget for repairs and improvements. I know that can be impossible because of the cost of buying into high performing public schools and a hot market but at least you’ll have your eyes open and know that any plans to renovate are probably a pipe dream if you don’t have more than enough cash left for it after you close.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think less goes wrong on a 1920 house than one built 20 years ago.

I think a lot of what you describe may be the result of deferred maintenance from previous owners that knew they were going to sell.

We did a lot on our 1920 house for the first couple of years, but much less in later years.

Ehhh we've owned our 1990 home for 2 years and it's been relatively problem free, no big surprises. My friend who bought a 1920s home last year could have written the OP. Every weekend she is working on another issue that has come up and they have spent a fortune dealing with the issues.

I do think the seller matters especially if they are elderly and have been in the house for a long time. That was the case for my friend, whereas we bought from a young couple who owned for 7 years, did some upgrades and then sold to move to a different neighborhood.

That’s such an interesting take - we had the opposite experience. We are only the second owners of our older house; the elderly original owners built it as their forever home, and we love it. Everything was finished to an amazing standard and wonderfully maintained. We went out of our way to avoid houses that had changed hands what is probably a normal number of times, because we didn’t want to be fooled by layer upon layer of quick patch-up jobs done by multiple rounds of people who only ever viewed the house as temporary. But this goes back to your original point that it all depends on the seller. We just had more confidence that we would be able to tell if a house was good or bad if it had only had a few previous owners.

Anonymous wrote:I think less goes wrong on a 1920 house than one built 20 years ago.

I think a lot of what you describe may be the result of deferred maintenance from previous owners that knew they were going to sell.

We did a lot on our 1920 house for the first couple of years, but much less in later years.

Ehhh we've owned our 1990 home for 2 years and it's been relatively problem free, no big surprises. My friend who bought a 1920s home last year could have written the OP. Every weekend she is working on another issue that has come up and they have spent a fortune dealing with the issues.

I do think the seller matters especially if they are elderly and have been in the house for a long time. That was the case for my friend, whereas we bought from a young couple who owned for 7 years, did some upgrades and then sold to move to a different neighborhood.

This was us in our starter house! You’re already not seeing or feeling the payoff for your hard work when you come through the door every night, so yes, sometimes treat yourself in small ways so you don’t go insane, but otherwise save, save, save whatever you can for your next downpayment. I don’t see this happening anytime soon, but should interest rates go way down again like they during the pandemic, refinance your mortgage and put any extra money towards that downpayment for your next house. Also know that the unsexy needed maintenance spending you’re doing is making the house way more comfortable than it would be otherwise, and anything big eventually shows up in your real estate listing, which gives buyers confidence in your house—especially first-time buyers who might be your market.

Make the house as sweet and cozy as you can, but skip expensive cosmetic changes you’ll have to leave behind like recessed lighting and custom window treatments and put the money into things you can take with you to your next house like artwork and accent furniture. See if there are any rooms, nooks, or hallways that can be given a new purpose, to add to the feeling of space, utility and newness. In addition to the above, I also decluttered like crazy and rearranged my rooms as if I was staging the house to sell. Going Home Edit levels of ocd in my pantry and closets really made the house work *for* me instead of against, and made it feel a lot bigger and better. Those are also areas that can look totally modern and clean-lined, without it feeling incongruous to the architecture. Added bonus when you move into your next house and enjoy tons of space because you didn’t immediately fill it up with crap you’ve been schlepping around since college.

Remember that the point of this current house is to learn some lessons about the minimums of what you personally want in a house to be happy, and to build equity that you can roll over into your next, much better house. Be comfortable but don’t spend $ turning it into an expensive perfect jewel box. I don’t know what your price point is, but often at starter house range, when you eventually go to put it on the market it needs to look as basic vanilla eye-roll hgtv as possible taste-wise, to appeal to the largest number of buyers.

Hang in there! You will look back fondly, sooner than you think, over your sweet little first home together. Wishing you all the best!

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TL;DR: 3 different ways to love where you live, that worked for me: (1) remember the unique function it plays, serving as an investment in your future while simultaneously meeting one of your most basic needs in life, right now; (2) place beautiful things around your home that make you happy, so those little moments of joy are around every corner—make sure they’re transportable to your next house; (3) experience novelty and improved utility by rearranging furniture, repurposing spaces for completely new uses, and decluttering.