Martian Homes for Men, Venusian Homes for Women

Men and women have always had their differences, and buying a house is no exception. This is an important fact to take into consideration especially if you are going to choose a house with your spouse or partner.

Here are a couple of points to think about, courtesy of a 1,000-respondent, omnibus phone survey by Coldwell Banker Real Estate:

Speed of decisions

Surprisingly enough, it is the women that make the faster decisions when it comes to buying a house. The fairer sex is more likely to decide on a house the day they walk into it, while men need more time and more visits to make a final decision.

Proximity to job and family

Women prefer their houses to be near to their extended family member over their jobs, while significantly fewer men prefer the opposite – to find a home nearer to their jobs than to extended family.

Individual financial decisions

More men would like to think they ‘wear the pants’ when it comes to major financial decisions in buying a house, although there are some women that think the same way as well. Curiously enough, most of the respondents that said this were more likely to think they make the major decisions – not their partners.

There are, however, some things where men and women agree on without much of a fuss. Here are some of the more prominent areas where both sexes see eye-to-eye on:

Mutual financial decisions

More men might want to think they have the final say in financial matters, but an even higher percentage of couples prefer to share the responsibility of making a major financial decision. They say it is mutual, and that both partners come to a conclusion together.

Use of spare rooms

If a person will choose what to do with an extra room, both men and women would stick to practical answers – bedrooms, studies and dens in that order of prevalence. There are respondents that said they would like to convert the spare room into a recreation, and men makes up the majority of this small group of respondents. It looks like men really do want their own little ‘man caves’ of pool tables, darts and pinball machines after all.

Security

A high percentage of both men and women are prepared to back out of a promising house if safety becomes an issue, although this is more observable in women than in men.

Now here’s the question: what does this all mean?

These differences and similarities all have a part to play when a couple chooses to buy a house of their own. Give them special attention and it will be easier for you to understand what matters for your partner. Ignore them, though, and you will definitely create friction when you and your partner are out looking for a home.

Just don’t forget to actually talk to your partner before you go ahead and make a decision. These statistics help you understand what’s going on, but it will take a deeper level of connection for you to understand what’s going on in your partner’s head!

The Ups and Downs of Owning a Home

If you want to save money in the long run, then buying a home is definitely one of the best ways to do that. This has been a standard motto ever since the real estate market started, and it has been a pretty good motto to live by for quite some time now.

That is until the real estate market crashed, paving the way for the recession to grab us all by total surprise.

Do not misunderstand this – owning a home is still the only way to save money in the long run. There are just some things you have to understand before you start saving any money at all.

For starters, you have to pay your mortgage fees ASAP. The more debt you have, the more time the interest has to grow. Your payments must also be large enough to not only pay for the interest but for the principal amount as well. You really don’t want to pay 5% of a $100,000 debt every month – which, by the way, increases as the overall debt increases. You can easily overcome this problem if you opt for fixed rate mortgage, where your monthly payments will never change until your last payment. The terms may be stiff, but the stability helps you plan better in the long run than with variable interest rates.

Properly maintaining your home will also significantly affect your overall costs. Learning how to keep your house in tip-top shape and fix minor problems will result in major savings over time. By contrast, damaging your house and letting small problems will rack up the bills. The only person that will handle these problems is you, meaning that you’ll have to shoulder all the expenses if you do not take good care of the home.

Another important consideration is the value of the property with the passage of time. The value of property does not always shoot sky-high over time, especially when you consider that most property values increase along the same values as inflation rates. Even this slow rate of value is good as long as the value of the property increases over time. The last thing you want to happen is to sell your house at half the amount you paid for it.

Just remember, however, that any money you put into your mortgage fee is akin to a savings account. Paying for a hundred-thousand dollar home is like putting a hundred thousand dollars in the bank – except you ‘use’ your savings every time you step into the house. This is why you have to take care of your house, since it is a form of savings that will appreciate in value.

All in all, there are only a few ways you can really lose money when you buy a home. The fees you pay for the transaction, the interest you pay for your loan, the maintenance of your home and the value of the property dropping instead of rising over time. Keep these in check, and you’ll be able to save money in the long run!