5 Signs You Need A Bigger Home

Hey y'all, today I want to talk to the people looking to upsize their house. I say that because there are two types of buyers, very apparently the ones looking to buy up and the ones looking to buy down. So if you're happy in your house, don't watch this, don't read this, you're totally good. 

But if you are looking to upsize, I want to talk to you just a minute because what I have found in my long experience of 14 years (and you know lots and lots of transactions) is guess what? People get paralysis by analysis and don't make a move until the pain is so high that they HAVE to do it; which actually makes more pain. For instance, we see it all the time where people are expecting a child in two months and they're like, "Hey I want to sell a house and move before we have the baby".

And that's a lot of undue stress that you put on yourself that maybe you didn't need to if you took a couple of cues from yourself and your surroundings to make sure that you are buying up at the right time. So here are six items that I have found to be true in my sales experience on when you should upsize and not necessarily, you got paid more money, I'm just saying you need a larger house and obviously the money part dictates the area that you might live in based on the pricing. 

#1 - You're going to start a family or you're planning on starting a family. I know for myself and my wife, we moved about a year before we started trying to have a child. That way we didn't have to go through all the stress and move all those extra baby gifts over to the next spot. 

And it gave us time to paint rooms and childproof and do all the little stuff that we wanted to do to make sure it was safe for our two rugrats that we now have. 

#2 -When your storage bill gets more expensive each and every year. We have a lot of stuff. We're Americans, it's a bad trait, but we do like to keep a hold of our stuff. When we do that, we oftentimes don't have room for it. So, then we rent space at some nice air conditioned office space for our matchbox cars. When that bill starts creeping up, I mean for $200-$300 bucks more a month, that's a pretty sizable difference in a house. Maybe that's something you need to look at. 

#3 - Every time you have guests that come over, you've got to get the card table out and extend your foreperson dining room into the living room so you can make enough room. So if you're one of those people that are just, you know, I call them Southern, Debbie Thompson always have people over, dinner parties, and football games and all of that stuff. Maybe you want to look at getting a little bit larger space so you can accommodate all of your guests that are coming in. 

#4 - I think you might want to look at getting a bigger house as if you have older parents and you're the only child. So I'm not saying you're going to let them live with you, but oftentimes I'm seeing a lot of intergenerational living right now where parents are selling their houses, maybe gifting it to the children and living with them. A lot of houses now are set up for that; which is amazing. A lot of good builders are going out there and building separate master suites or master suites on two floors so you can have those accommodations. 

So oftentimes I've seen it where families have elderly parents and something happens and they have to move in with them, adapt and adjust; it's a cluster and everybody's stressed out. So if you think through that a little bit (which is actually a place I am in my life), I think that'll go a long way with making sure that your home life stays homey. 

#5 - The other part is for your hobbies. A lot of people take up different hobbies later in life, whether it's woodworking, welding, crafting or whatever you like to do. And you're always spread out on your dining room table or your kitchen table, and you always have to put it right back up before you go to bed. So that way you have room to eat breakfast in the morning. So if those hobbies are really important to you and you have some of the other factors I've talked about, it might be a good time to look for a space with an extra bedroom or a bonus room or an extra living room for that matter. 

#6 - If you're going to start telecommuting to work. The trend in business right now is more telecommuting. Office space is expensive for companies, so they're allowing their employees to work from home, which is great, but you've got to have space for that. I've seen people working from their beds on their laptops. It's just really driving them nuts and they feel like they're not getting a lot done. So if you're working from home, I think it might be a good spot to have an extra space for that work. And oftentimes check with your CPA. 

You can write off space like that to help with some of the costs. So whether you're looking at a huge jump in purchase price or you're not looking at all, but there's some factors in this email, um, that are not email and this video that are, um, ringing true to you. Um, I would encourage you to be a little proactive. I know it's a little stressful, especially when you may not be financially ready to make that jump, but to keep an eye out because you never know when a good deal comes along that you might be able to pop onto. So if you have any questions, please reach out to us. We're happy to help. And we're here to guide you through every transitional life, whether it's upsizing downsizing or, you know, just being a good human!