Anonymous wrote:There are still some houses that sold at the peak in 2005 that are selling for less today. Ouch.

On the other hand, there's 19 years of equity in the property.

Where!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We move every 3-4 years, overpaying isn't a huge deal since we won't be living in any specific house for very long. It's almost like high rent but no one complains about our cat.

Overpaying is much riskier for you, because you taking the risk of losing when you sell.

They probably rent it and don’t sell when they move.

We overpaid, and our mortgage is currently about 41% of our takehome pay. And we're behind on retirement (though we do max) and college savings.

-We love the house and plan to stay here for the next 20 years till retire, if not till we pass or go into a nursing home
-It's a great public school district
-It's a safe neighborhood
-It gives us a lot of space - an office/guest bedroom that we were desperately needing, a finished basement for soon to be teens to hang out.
-It's a SFH so we don't share walls anymore.
-It (knock on wood) didn't seem to need any major work. It's not new construction, but all major systems and windows are within the past few years. Kitchen isn't brand new, but white wood cabinets and maybe 8 years old, so good enough to last a long time.
-though we overpaid, we have an emergency fund with some padding in case something does go wrong that we need to fix
-It's in VA so our kids will have great state school options (good since we are behind on college savings)

If you know you're going to be in an area for a long time, I would buy regardless of rates, if it's the right house.

We overpaid, and I feel great about it.

We had three qualifications for a home and within those limits, there were very few options (basically price, # bedrooms, location). We looked at a ton of houses. Every house we looked at was 1200-1400 square feet (this is in DC proper). One was 2000 sq ft. It was such a HUGE difference that we jumped on it. Our realtor said there weren’t other serious buyers so we should offer $40k below asking. This was in 2020, when rates were low and bidding wars were common. We knew if something weird happened and we lost this house, we might never get as big a place. So we offered asking against the realtors advice.

We got the house (realtor was right, there were no other offers), it’s the perfect forever home for our family, and we absolutely love it. Zero regrets.

The price is the price, whether it was formerly higher or lower is irrelevant. Negotiate the best deal you can and don't look back. Over time prices usually rise regardless, unless you buy somewhere poorly located and/or with a fatal flaw which cannot ever be remediated, like a terrible view, close proximity to a very busy road or intersection, etc. If you remember that location is everything when buying, you'll be fine in the long run.

My approach to house transactions is to just do what you need to do and then don’t look at it. It’s like I don’t look at the stock market. Set it and forget it until it’s time to sell (or slowly reallocate to something more conservative for stocks but you get what I mean).

You don’t want to buy a house and then spend five years obsessing over the Zillow estimate. Just do it and then stop looking. You can’t control the market.

I felt like I overpaid by buying new construction (everything new, shiny, all custom). But a year later and I’ve had some nice appreciation by just living in the house. So I don’t worry too much now