You found your soulmate and tied the knot. Now you’re ready to look for a house of your own, a place to call home. Before signing contracts, it’s important to make sure that you can afford a home using a mortgage affordability calculator. Otherwise, you’ll live with regrets. Listed below are a few pros and cons to help you make an educated decision.

The Ability to Customize the Space

Owning a home gives you the ability to customize it to your liking. Unlike renting a property where you’re limited to painting walls and hanging a few pictures, with a home you can make big changes. If you decide that you want to remodel the kitchen, you can. Want to add a pool, it’s done. If you often entertain you can even create an outdoor kitchen complete with outdoor kitchen cabinets. 

Home Repairs

If a pipe in the bathroom bursts, as the homeowner, it’s up to you to fix it. This can end up costing a few hundred dollars. When you rent a property, you call the landlord, and they pay for the repair. Unfortunately, any home over 15 or 20 years will require maintenance during the first few years of homeownership. 

The Fees That Come With Owning a Home

You may have saved enough to get into a home, however, the fees don’t end there. Along with the monthly mortgage payment, you may also have PMI insurance. This is a fee attached to a mortgage when the buyer puts less than 20 percent of the purchase price down on the property. Unfortunately, it can add an additional hundred or several hundred dollars to your mortgage payment. You’ll also need to factor in property and school taxes and homeowners’ insurance. When you rent an apartment or a home, you only pay the monthly rent and renter’s insurance. 

Ability to Move

If you decide, as newlyweds, to rent for the first year, you can move. You may get a job across the country or just decide that your current location isn’t where you want to live. When you buy a home, making these decisions is much harder to achieve. In order to move, you must first sell your home, and with no equity, you may end up losing money on your investment.  

Affordability

Not everyone has the money to own a home. It’s not just the mortgage or taxes that you’ll have to pay, there’s overhead too. You’ll need utilities such as gas and electricity, possibly a water bill and garbage removal. If you go into your home using your entire savings, you have no money in reserves in the event that an unexpected bill comes your way. You can update appliances to those that are energy-efficient and budget your use of gas and electricity. When you rent an apartment, your gas, water, and garbage removal are, in most cases, included. All you’ll pay for additionally is electricity. However, you could also look at a purchase for what it could become, not what it is. Looking at things like the after repair value can justify one investment or another, especially if you aren’t looking for your forever home. 

Set a Budget

When you rent an apartment you pretty much know what your monthly bills will be. Unfortunately, when you own a home, these bills can fluctuate from month to month. You may need a new roof or a new septic system. Either one can run into the thousands. You can create a household budget. However, having the ability to stick to it is another thing. 

There’s a long-standing argument that if you rent you’re throwing your money away. However, if you stop and think about it, renting provides you with a place to live. You may be ready to own a home, or you may not. Weight the pros and cons carefully before you start your search for the perfect home.