It could always be a mistake when you buy a house. It’s an expensive purchase you can’t inspect all that well with unknown neighbors who might turn out to be insane or Alex Van Halen. For us, we were constrained even harder than most because we required these things:

• • Somewhere with fiber. We work from home in jobs that require frequent high-bandwidth video calls and we are also heavy internet users
  • Somewhere not in the boonies (also wouldn’t have fiber)
  • Must be fairly quiet (so not on main road, or near interstate, etc.)
  • Must be within ~30 minutes of a major airport (we both travel a good amount; all my friends live elsewhere)
  • Large enough where we don’t disturb each other while working (my gf talks really loud on her frequent work calls and meetings)
  • Under a million dollars
  • Well-designed, usable kitchen
  • No HOA
  • Good windows
  • Two car garage
  • Not in a high-risk zone for flood or fire

So that was a lot of constraints! That means of the houses for sale in our area, roughly 90% of them were eliminated by those stipulations alone. Many others were removed from consideration because they were fucking ugly eyesores or otherwise had features we didn’t care for.

That said, we did not actually look at a lot of houses as of the ones that met our checklist and weren’t otherwise ghastly, only one or two a month remained that we’d even want to go visit in person. The second one we actually did go to look at we liked, so we bought it. The house was built in 1975, but for a house built in 1975 it has been pretty well-maintained and was a quality build at the time so it has had fewer actual problems than I expected. It was also renovated a good bit, though a lot of original features remain (such as some of the 1970s-vintage interior wood that cannot by bought for any price now). We also got it fairly thoroughly inspected beforehand.

So, by a combination of decent luck and adequate due diligence, we wound up with a place that suits us pretty well and has low carrying costs. Don’t get me wrong, it does have problems. It’s a house built in 1975, after all. For instance, there is way too much carpet, though luckily not that worn. The roof will need replacing in 5-7 years and that will be very expensive because the place is big and it has solar panels that will have to be professionally removed and then re-installed. The hot water heater needs flushing and likely will need replacing soon. The kitchen is slightly too small which we will change when we renovate. Etc.

We are happy with the place and could have done so much worse, especially considering how few houses we had available given our list of requirements.