Let me answer the rest of the questions from New York Erratic:
What would you say is the most difficult part of buying your first house? Is there something that you wish people would have told you?
I didn’t own my first house until I was 46 when I moved into the house my bride had purchased seven years earlier.
“Everyone” said that you’re “supposed” to own a house. I was never that interested in doing so.
My parents didn’t own a home until I went away to college. So I had no models in this area. While having to move every few years could be a pain, it was less of an encumbrance than a house.
In 2000, we bought our current home AND we were landlords; I HATED that. It was enough to take care of the living abode, but going over to mow the lawn and shovel the snow off the roof – it had a flat roof – was a royal pain. We sold it in 2004, shortly after The Daughter was born.
So to the question:
1) You DON’T have to buy a house.
2) If you do, it would be helpful to be handy with tools, which I am decidedly not.
3) In all likelihood, you will pour every dime into the purchase, so that inevitable first repair of something you did not expect, you probably can’t afford.
4) This will almost inevitably lead to buyers’ remorse. “How did I not notice that the dryer has a capacity of four shirts?” (This is true in our case, BTW.)
5) If you DO buy a house, you may spend lots of money on stuff that nobody can see. I was visiting my cousin Anne at Thanksgiving, and she told of the thousands of dollars spent to avoid flooding in the basement, expenditures no visitor or future purchaser will ever see. Some of our similar improvements involved spending thousands of dollars having a hole dug in the front yard to dislodge a tree root from the plumbing, lest we have sewage in the basement.
A LOT of investment in a house is all but invisible, and that can be REALLY discouraging. If I had it to do over again, I doubt I’d buy a house at all.
The single advantage is that people seem to think you are a “grownup” when you own a home.
Have you ever owned a dog?
Yeah, I was around 10, maybe (give or take two years). We had an Alaskan husky called Lucky Stubbs; I have no idea who named him, but it wasn’t I.
Anyway, he would nip me. I would say BITE but it didn’t draw blood or anything, so nip. But then he nipped one of the daughters of our minister. THEN my father gave him to a farmer where he’d have more room to roam than our tiny city back yard.
PS: after that, I was rather wary of dogs for years.
What’s your favorite spice?
Scary Spice.
OK, I jest. Cinnamon.
Old used books or brand new never read books?
Usually new, unless they are vintage. Books are like cars in that when they’re about 20 years old, they’re just old, but at some point they become VINTAGE. I have a hymnal from 1849, and another book from that period called Verdant Green, and THOSE are, as the kids used, are COOL.