When people are buying a home they often like to ask the question “What’s the most important thing to consider when buying a home?” This is a much harder question to answer than most people realize. A home is an immensely personal purchase and what’s important to one person may not be important to others.
Let’s take a look at a young family as an example. Different young families may have wildly different needs
Think of a young family. If they are buying a home the most important thing to them might be the school district. All they care about is what school will the children go to. Everything else can take a back burner and they will just look in the right school district. They will compromise on a lot of other wants and needs to get into the school they want.
Now take a young family with the exact same age of the parents and same age of the children. Are they going to want to focus on buying a home in the right school district? Potentially not. Maybe for them the most important considering is being close to family. They want to be walking distance to parents, brothers, sisters, etc… So they’ll only look in a certain area so they are close by. That becomes their most important
Yet another young family, let’s call them the Johnson’s because just writing “young family” over and over again gets boring. So the Johnson’s may not be too worried about schools or even about family. Maybe the Johnson’s family is in a different province altogether. The most important thing for the Johnson’s might be a 4 bedroom home so each of their children gets their own room (see what I did there? Just gave them three little Johnson’s too!). On top of that maybe they want a lot of space for the “lil Johnson’s” to run around outside. So they care a lot more about buying a home with a large yard than someone else.
The Johnson’s have friends, lets call them the Smith’s. The Smith’s aren’t in as good a spot financially as the Johnson’s. They also want a bit of a bigger house than they can afford. So what do they want? Their most important consideration is a home with a basement apartment that they can rent out. The Smith’s want someone else to help pay their mortgage! They may be able to get a home just like the Johnson’s. Wait, I should have called the Johnson’s the Joneses so I could have said “Keeping up with Joneses”. Missed opportunity.
So when you’re buying a home you have to analyze your own situation and decide whats your most important consideration. Dissect your needs vs your wants and speak to your agent about what part os town will get you what you want.
