Happy May! I’ve always loved May because it’s the summer kick-off month for southerners. School gets out, finals are over, temperatures consistently stay warm, and local pools open up! Even though we’re in Kansas now I’m still in a “May = Summer” mindset and don’t hate it. 🙂
May is looking even more cheery this morning because we’re starting off the month with a much lighter load mentally and financially. The sale of our very first home was a done deed yesterday morning, and we are honestly just thrilled to wipe our hands of that responsibility.
We’ve been talking about the future sale of that home since the day we bought it. We always knew it was going to happen one day sooner than later. We didn’t know when or how or what the logistics of all of it would look like, but we knew it would happen eventually.
Overall our first experience with home ownership was a breeze and incredibly enjoyable. I’ve written several posts in the past about how special that home was to us, most recently a few weeks ago when I visited the house one last time on my way home from Alabama. Jamie and I were talking last night about lessons learned from owning that home, and we settled on two major takeaways of knowledge from owning this specific home.
1. Even though we got a lot more bang for our buck as far as mortgage vs. rent money goes, we still ended up spending a chunk of the money we saved on other home expenses.
Our mortgage payment was relatively inexpensive considering we were living in a brand new beautiful home. If we would have spent the same amount of money on rent we most likely would have lived in a home 10+ years older that needed some significant work. Though we saved money on our monthly payment, we still ended up spending a chunk of that extra money on expenses that come with owning a home such an lawn care services, a home security system, occasional pest control, and other various upkeeps on the property. In a nutshell, it was much cheaper payment-wise per month owning our home than renting, but we probably broke close to even once we added in all the random home-ownership expenses we had throughout the year.
2. As far as owning a home in a military community goes, it’s hard to quickly add value to a new construction.
I absolutely, positively adored living in a brand new home for obvious reasons, but it’s just simply harder to up the value of the home when you’re living a transient lifestyle. As two 23-year-olds, we were excited to buy a home that would essentially need zero work while we lived in it, but putting in little work meant that we were only relying on the amount of time we lived there to up the value. Though the value of the home did increase while we owned it, it wasn’t as much as if we would have purchased a home that had a little wiggle room for us to make financially-smart improvements where we’d see the bigger return on the back end.
We’re honestly thankful for the whole experience that buying this home gave us. We learned so much about buying and selling homes that we’ll carry forward and apply to each of our future moves. No knowledge is ever wasted knowledge, right?
If you’re considering buying in a military town and have questions, I’d love to chat with you! Please feel free to get in touch any time.
Hi! I’m Erica, and I absolutely adore sharing my life on this website with you! I come here almost daily to blab about all of the things related to being a regular wife and mother in today’s ever-evolving society. I share about our new home, what’s on our kitchen table, what we’re hanging in our closets, where we’re traveling to next, my crazy 5 a.m. work outs, how I make time for girlfriends, our faith, and much more. We always have a lot of balls in the air and somewhat thrive on the chaos. I believe in the power of story-telling as a form of inspiration and entertainment, so I’m here to do both! I was born and raised in north Alabama and recently re-planted roots here again after my husband transitioned out of the Army (he is now in the Reserve and it’s going so well!) I’m a super proud mom to three little girls (ages 7, 4, and 1) who seem to be the stars of the show around here (for good reason – they’re pretty great!) I’m so glad you found me and are here reading! I hope we can get to know each other here on the blog as well as Facebook and/or Instagram. xoxo