Neighborhood of the Week: The home search - needs vs. wants

The houses we live in can be annoying. A hallway is too narrow, a bathroom is too small, a door never shuts right or the basement smells like almonds for no reason at all. I’ve only lived in my current house for about a year and a half, and though it’s a big-time improvement on our last home, there are already things that drive me nuts.

I’ve visited homes far nicer and more expensive than mine, and even in those spectacular spaces, I always catch the homeowner making at least one minor complaint. It’s human nature, I suppose, and American culture certainly fuels our innate desires for the more and better.

It’s the time of year to be thankful for what you have, and applying that holiday spirit to both homeownership and the process of finding a new home can be a great asset to more mindful living.

Realistically, most of us can’t afford the dream home that checks every box. It’s a balance between needs and wants. Yes, I want an indoor swimming pool and hot tub. No, I will never afford one writing little articles for the local newspaper.

I don’t want to assume what people find to be important in where they live, but I’ve found my own experience of searching for and buying our current home to be a pretty good example of balancing needs and wants. So while I’d prefer to have a master bathroom with enough space to practice my golf swing, I can be content with the fact there’s just enough room to shower, brush my teeth and … well, you get the picture.

Our Needs

When it came time for our family to find a new home, we made the decision on what we absolutely needed within the budget. We’re talking the bare minimum of what it would take to force us into packing and moving all our stuff, again.

For people on a budget (us), the list needed to be the essentials and nothing else. Sorry, walk-in closet. Sorry, two-sink master bathroom. Those aren’t essentials.

After some careful consideration, our list boiled down to:

- Within 15 minutes of my wife’s work

- Enough room for us and four kids — that’s a three toilet minimum, folks.

- Safe neighborhood close to a quality elementary school

- No need for immediate major renovations or repairs

Surprisingly, even in an active market, these essentials were enough to narrow our list considerably. We were tempted by a few newer, nicer, bigger homes — one had 3,000 square feet and an amazing walk-in closet for every bedroom. But it was too far from work. We looked at new construction that offered immaculate design elements, but they didn’t offer much more space for our locked-in price.

There were two homes in particular in which we nearly made offers — they were both great homes and offered more “wants,” but my wife and I ultimately didn’t love the neighborhoods. They were perfectly fine locations, but it just didn’t feel like the right place.

By waiting for a couple extra days, we found a home in a far more ideal location. It hit all the essentials at the right price.

As far as wants go, the house isn’t perfect. It’s strange going from a walk-in closet to a normal one in our master bedroom, but at the end of the day, both my wife and I felt like we didn’t really need a huge closet to store our clothes. Yes, I have a lot of Minnesota Twins T-shirts, but they still don’t eat up too much space.

Our master bathroom is small. It isn’t a place to relax or for two people to use at once. But you know what? I like using the bathroom by myself, thank you very much. We have two other full bathrooms, so there’s still plenty of space for everyone.

The house is a little older than I wanted — the water heater is on its last rope and the roof has maybe 10 years instead of 20 before requiring some care. Those are reasonable concessions. You can’t fully predict home maintenance anyway. Our last home was less than five years old when we bought it, and the water heater needed replacing within six months of living there.

But my wife works close enough to home where she can come home for lunch often. She can volunteer at our daughter’s school, and one of our neighbors is a spectacular cook who likes to share goodies. The area is safe and our kids will go to an excellent school. They have room to play both inside and outside. And I even have room to store my DVDs and comic books.

Some homebuyers will need new construction or a walk-in closet or whatever. People value certain things over others and that’s perfectly fine. But taking the time to separate your essentials from the amenities can eliminate much of the stress of buying a new home. In our case, hitting all our needs meant feeling confident in our purchase. It eliminated the risk of feeling any buyer’s remorse.

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Let us know about standout neighborhoods and developments that we may feature in an upcoming Neighborhood of the Week. Contact Tyler Wilson at twilson@cdapress.com.

Real Estate Agents, take advantage of Neighborhood of the Week by sending in your suggestions for featured areas, including sites outside the normal confines of Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and Hayden.