What To Look For In Homes For Sale When You're Moving From An Apartment
If you've lived in an apartment for years and are planning to buy a house, you'll want to understand the responsibilities associated with owning a single-family home so you buy the right house. With an apartment, you have a maintenance staff to take care of all the maintenance and repair chores that pop up, but when you have your own home, you're responsible for everything. Here's how this could affect the type of home you buy.
The Need For Yardwork
If you buy into an HOA community, it's possible the HOA association will maintain the grounds so you won't have to do yardwork. However, most of the time, you'll be responsible for keeping your lawn lush and trimmed. You might look forward to this after years of living in an apartment since you can grow flowers and plants as well as tend to grass. However, it's also possible that you hate the thought of taking care of a yard or you start out enthusiastic and get tired of it quickly.
You can always pay someone to mow for you, but that's ad added monthly expense. If you've never maintained a yard before, you may want a home with a small yard so you aren't overwhelmed with all the work you have to do.
The Availability Of Recreational Facilities
One fun thing about apartment life is having a swimming pool within a short walk. When you live in a single-family home, you may not have any recreational facilities nearby, and even if there is a city pool, it could be expensive to pay to use it every day. If swimming is something you do often, then you may want to buy a home that has a pool or buy into a planned community that has a private pool you can use as part of your HOA dues so you can use it freely.
The Proximity To Transportation
Apartment complexes are often on a bus line so you don't have to walk very far to find a ride to work or the store. Single-family homes may be deep in subdivisions or in rural areas where there is no bus service at all. Determine how important it is to have close proximity to a bus line or to grocery stores so you can walk where you need to go before you start looking at single-family home listings.
By knowing what's important to you in a home, you can narrow down your search for the perfect single-family house for sale. You may want a private oasis in the woods or on a farm, but you may prefer the energy of city life. You can find a home nearly anywhere, and finding a home that fits your lifestyle is important so your life is just as convenient as it was living in an apartment.