My first place was a 490 square foot condo and it was majestic. It was a concrete building which made it a little less noisy and my unit was a second floor, south facing gem. It was so good that my brother and best friend eventually bought places there and then we were a stairway away from a night of video games. It also only took 45 minutes to clean. But after getting married it was time to start looking for the next place.

Building a House in Suburbia

Now moving to suburbia was a relatively easy decision for us. I didn’t want to fix up a house as that’s not my definition of fun and we didn’t want to mortgage ourselves to the hilt to get a nice place close to downtown.

Side Note! When you go to a bank and ask “what can I afford?” they are not telling you what you can afford! They are telling you “this is the maximum mortgage we will give you that we don’t think you will default on but you may have to give up fresh fruit, vacations and buying new clothes if anything in your life changes.” Don’t spend what a bank will give you on a house!

Okay back to suburbia. So we drove to the edge of our city and started looking at show homes. The options were condos, row houses, town houses, small houses with an optional detached garage, larger homes with double attached garages and then the estate homes with triple garages. We ended up picking a 1,750 sq foot detach double garage model that seemed really practical. It had a wide open main floor with windows on three sides, two kids bedrooms that were exactly the same size on the second floor and on the opposite side of the floor a master and ensuite. No wasted space at all!

So as our family grew we developed the basement so we would have a play room for our boys. I’d also like to point out that this was great to have for me. When the kids were young I’d put them down to bed, take the baby monitor to the basement, close the door and crank up a movie or a video game.

But fast forward to today and we’re almost done the mortgage, our kids are in school, both of us are working, we’re in peak earning years and… the most dangerous words in home ownership start to creep into conversations “it would be nice to have some more space.” This is the time when most people start looking at the “move up” homes. There’s lots of reasons to get a bigger house. It would be great to have an actual home office now that I work from home two days a week. Then I wouldn’t have to set up a portable table in my kids room twice a week. I could set up a power rack in a larger basement and work out three times a week. We could hopefully get a bigger back yard. Maybe even a triple garage, the ultimate suburban dream, to store more stuff. Tons of reasons to take one more step on the hedonic treadmill in search of the next consumer hit.

But what would moving up take for us? Likely around $250,000. We would feel great and excited. But then we’d actually have to pay for it. For years! We’d have to sell our house and deal with that stress. Then we’d have to actually move everything. Then we would likely have to downsize when the kids move out, although that is more than a decade away.

So what should you do if you’re in this scenario? I think we should sit tight. Focus on the good things. Our best friends are halfway down our block, if we moved then how many quick bike rides or catch-ups would we miss? We know all the issues with the house, what would we find in a new house? We got to build our house. All of the finishings from the white kitchen cabinets to the 24” tile in the shower we picked. Best of all, we’re almost done the mortgage. That’s an extra $1,700 a month that we can invest, spend on trips or cover an emergency. It’s freedom! So why would we make the decision to move into a larger prison when we could be closer to freedom. Closer to retirement. And what would our kids remember? A bigger house or trips to Hawaii.

Tips on Building Your First House

• Spend less than what the bank will let you borrow

• Find out the cost of the show home, not the base price, upgrades can cost 5-25% of the actual house (we paid $150 for every pot light over a decade ago)

• Figure out your backyard size, check out the drawings and measure out the backyard, new communities often have itty bitty backyards

• Don’t do tiled shower bottoms, the grout needs too much maintenance

• Focus on the important things as well as what light fixture you want

• Check the model of the toilets, ours cracked and turned out there was a class action law suit over this

• Check out the model of the furnace, ours needed to be replaced after 10 years and a modulating version is quieter and more efficient

• Get a 50 gallon hot water tank, new tubs are big

• Ask how much it costs to have higher basement ceilings

• Put in ethernet lines, mesh wifi is good but I still wish I had them hard wired

• Pot lights are great

Basement Renovation Tips

• Barricade tiles work great as a small subfloor that can reduce that cold basement floor feel

• Check if your area has radon, it’s a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can leak into your basement, if you have it you can get your basement sealed an a fan installed

• Turn off your furnace when you sand the drywall, we didn’t and it led to furnace issues

• Find out where your internet and phone line inputs are and have a cable tube from there to the mechanical room

• Make sure you keep enough storage space

• If you want a theater set up you can use center speakers as rears

March 2023 Update

We stayed in our house and have paid it off! Biggest surprise was how anticlimactic it was. I mean I wasn’t expecting much, but you’ve seen people in videos screaming, burning up the mortgage documents and after the mouse click that confirmed the last prepayment there wasn’t even a drop of dopamine. Definitely reinforces the old advice that you need to focus on the journey and not the destination. I do have to say though that I’m looking forward to investing more. Back to the journey to retirement!