House Hunting? How To 'Right Size' Your Home Choice
When you go shopping for family homes, you'll have a lot of choices as to layout, size, shape, price, and location. How can you find the right home that will perfectly fit your needs among all these choices? The answer is to focus on 'right-sizing' your house. What does it mean to 'right-size' your home? And how can you do this? Here's a brief guide.
What is a Right Sized Home?
The right size of a home to buy is not a one-size-fits-all answer. Some buyers need a little, while
Looking for a 'right size' home is not, then, about settling for a small place or buying as much as you can afford. It is about analyzing your current living needs realistically, including your future needs, and matching that style to what you buy.
How Can You Find the Right Size?
So, if you want to actively match the real estate to your own life, where should you begin? Here are a few key steps to take.
First, walk through and honestly assess your current living space. Identify how much you use each room and what for. What are its pros and cons? If this room were to disappear, how much would it affect your daily life? Could you combine its use with any other? For example, if you use the room for guests, how often is it really used? Could it serve as a combination home office? Or is it often fully utilized?
Next, think about what's lacking in your current space. If you feel that the house is too small, why is that? Do you need more rooms or do you just need larger rooms? Which rooms would you replace, and with what? What specific things do you want to do in your home that are inconvenient or impossible due to the layout?
Finally, consider your foreseeable future needs. If you plan to start or add to your family, you may need to add bedrooms to your next home. If you're moving in with your partner, how will you combine space needs? If you're retiring, though, will you have
As you research your real needs and the way you use your current home, the right size new home will begin to take shape. It may be larger than you expect, or it may be smaller. It might even be the same as your current home. Whatever the answer, use this as a basis for your house hunting endeavors. The result will be a more productive search as well as a quicker transition into the home of your actual dreams.