How to Control the Emotions of Home Buying

Buying a home is almost always an emotion-based process. Once you find a home you like, you become emotionally attached to it. Emotional attachment can cause you to make unwise decisions when making an offer, handling negotiations, and so forth. Once you’ve fallen in love with a house and visualized it being your home, you’ll start to do WHATEVER it takes to make sure it becomes your home.

This is about the worst possible way to buy a home, but also may be the best possible home for you.  You do want to fall in love with your new home, but you also want to be careful.

You can literally cost yourself thousands of dollars, if not tens of thousands of dollars, by being too emotionally attached. Instead of letting emotions rule the game, try to include some common sense in the buying process. Real estate investors have a saying that goes, “Don’t fall in love with the house, fall in love with the deal.” This is easier for an investor as he won’t live there, but you should be aware of this, and use your head.

Having said that, I realize that you will always have some emotional attachment to your house. You need to like it. Your goal is to strike a balance between liking the house and using common sense to tell you whether you are sacrificing too much to try to get the house. If you find you have to make lots and lots of compromises to get a house, stop yourself and ask, “Is this really worth it?”

Remember to strike a balance between emotions and common sense in your home buying process. It will help you enjoy your home that much more once you actually move in.

5 Questions to ask yourself when purchasing a New Home

While you are looking at homes and once you make an offer on a home, there are some questions you should be asking yourself to help keep common sense involved in the decision making process:

This list is in now way complete. I invite you to add more questions in the comment section.

Here are five IMPORTANT questions to ask yourself:

1. Does the home work for you and does it meet your NEEDS
Remember the difference between wants and needs?
2. Do the numbers work for you?
Can you really afford this home?
3.  What sacrifices are you making to get this home?
It helps to think specifically about what you might be giving up for this particular home.
4.Will the home meet your needs for the near future?

Will your family be growing?  Are the kids going away to college?

5. Will you still want to mow that big back yard in a few years?

If you know that you are the type of person who easily becomes emotional in your decision making process, it might be a good idea to carry a note card with these four questions on it to remind you while you are looking!

Remember to strike a balance between emotions and common sense in your home buying process. It will help you enjoy your home that much more once you actually move in.