What are you looking for?

We all know the classic cliché of a home being a “cabin in the woods”. I’m just sharing a more modern reality of the home – a home that is still an investment in the future, but is now a home in the moment.

This is a reality that is increasingly common as homeowners get older, but most homeowners don’t realize it. Many of us know from personal experience that when we put a home on the market we are usually putting it on the market to buy, not to live in. Yet for most home buyers, our home is the investment that will pay off the least financially over the long run.

The problem with that reality is that it is a reality of the new age. We have the luxury of moving from one place to another. That’s an opportunity to change and improve, yet we are still stuck in an old-fashioned, conventional home that is not even the same as what we want to do or build. That is a huge missed opportunity.

As I see it, there are two main areas where home buyers are stymied when they move.

One is in the realm of the “where do I start?” moment. Why is it so hard to get started on a home purchase? Home buying is a big purchase because it is a big commitment. There is a lot of money involved, and that is always a concern. Home buying is like marriage or, in this case, like life. It is a big commitment and a big decision that has to be made.

One of the big reasons you may not be able to move on to buying a home is because of the “where do I start” moment. In most cases, it is not because the home is under-appreciated or that the market is tight, but because they are under-equipped for the kind of lifestyle that you want to live.

I know that this is not the easiest topic to discuss, but one of the biggest mistakes a home buyer can make is in not looking at the “how” of it all. Most of the time this is not a real problem as it really is more a matter of “what should I do now?”.

This is not such a difficult concept to grasp. A home is your living space, and that is where you will spend the majority of your time. If you can afford a home that is well-designed and well-maintained, then you are doing a good job. A big part of that is the way you live, and if you are going to actually live well you need to do a lot of these things.

I am guilty of this in my own home. When I first moved into my new home, I was a mess. That was probably the biggest mistake I made in my new home. To make matters worse, I did not do the cleaning up right. In my new home, I had a good home-care company that did a great job. My home looked great, and all was well, but I did not do a good job cleaning up.

The cleaning is pretty much the number one mistake we make when it comes to homes. Many of us don’t realize how much dust, dirt, and other things can collect in a home. It is this type of accumulation that causes so much of the damage that we see in our new homes.