40 Of The Worst Purchases These Homeowners Made

I wouldn't say we have any regrets. Was everything ideal? No. We had to buy in a neighborhood that we're not excited about and obviously prices and interest rates are what they are. But it's hard to say I regret that because we bought when we could. I can't really regret having not done it sooner because... we couldn't have. And we got most of what we wanted in terms of space.

So, none, I guess.

Not buying 4 years ago.

I absolutely LOVE my new house.... However, somebody just built a HUGE McMansion not far and they can see into my entire backyard from their back porch. I knew there was a new subdivision going in next door, but didn't realize how close the houses would be to mine or that they would block my mountain view.

Not learning more about home maintenance before buying and moving in. Nothing major has happened thankfully but after a few years I've realized how little I actually know about taking care of a house and how it's affecting my utilities and comfort. Not to a degree where I regret buying the house, but if I could go back and do it all again I'd take care of some things sooner/differently and would probably have better results.

I should have gone down to the city office and asked to pull all of the permits for the house for the prior 5 years and done a better job of investigating if there were any known permit violations. It turns out that there were a few from a feud with a neighbor where they were each calling the city to report anything and everything that was a problem. The seller did not disclose this, which is fraud and absolutely makes them liable. However, it's also a situation where I can resolve the permit issues for about $3,000, or I can fight them in court for ten times that with absolutely no hope that I would ever be able to recover the money. I've bought and sold homes before and never had this issue. Live, learn, and chalk it up to $3k in tuition to the school of hard knocks.

That I didn’t borrow a bit extra to have a buffer for things like house repairs and rates. We literally borrowed the minimum we needed for the house and put every cent of savings into it. I’m definitely regretting doing that, now with cost of living and rate rises we no longer have the ability to save anything significant by the end of each month so any repairs and extras are going to take forever to save for

Buying a house we weren’t super psyched about but we needed a house due to moving for a job.

Not particularly recent, but we did not pull out cars in the driveway or attempt to park them. So we didn't realize that my car could only enter the driveway from one direction, so I had to turn around half a block up every time I needed to park. And we just BARELY got two cars in the driveway.

So my regret is that I took for granted that the driveway met our needs.

Interest rates

Not looking in the attic, they built a new roof over the old one.
Gonna make remodeling hard.

Buying in an area where my house is the most expensive one.

Everyone else's prices are driving mine down. It's making it harder to sell for what it's worth.

Getting a homestead exemption the month we moved in.

Not making it secure enough earlier.

They won't regret anything other than the higher monthly payment due to interest rates unless the market crashes.

My current neighbor bought just before the 2008 crash and it took them until 2020 for their home value to get back to what they paid.

I bought awhile back. But if I spent $100 to $150k more I could have bought a much better house and would be $1 million more now.

Recently meaning what? I purchased 5 years ago; however, the recent property valuation was an absolute crock-of-s**t that doubled my tax-burden. NOW my monthly payment is about 30% higher than it was before and I can BARELY make it every month...but in my market, it's still SLIGHTLY cheaper than renting an apartment.

Bought at the peeeeeeeak

Not too recently (3 years ago) but I regret buying my parents house. Everything needs to be replaced now. We replaced very expensive custom windows and found that the frames were all rotted and we had to redo a ton of stucco. That was the tip of the iceberg we have yet to tackle. It was a no-brainer for the price and equity but now we’re stuck with how s****y the market is and all the things we need to fix in order to sell.

Not buying sooner before the interest rates jumped so fast. When we put the offer in on our house in April 2022, the rate was 3.2%. By the time we closed in June 2022, we closed at 5.25%.

EDIT: Correcting myself here, we started looking in March 2022 and the rates then were around 3.2-3.5%. By the time we locked our rate in with all the paperwork, it was up to 5.125%. We closed with 3 days to spare on the rate lock because the owners were being annoying with the closing date.

Bought literally last week. Wish i had more bathrooms but its fine. I plan on building one in basement.