Mary and I have decided to buy a house. Neither of us have ever bought a house before, and it’s a big decision. I’ve been struck by how little the church talks about what principles should guide our thinking when we are buying a house. Where should you live? How much should you spend? What type of mortgage should you choose? What sort of features should we be focusing on? These are questions facing us now. And while there are no concrete answers to these questions that would uniformly apply to every prospective home buyer, I think there are some principles for buying a house that could help us to make the decision in good faith.
I’d like to explore some of those principles over a few blog posts. But first, I’d love to hear from anyone who has any ideas as to what some of these principles might be. Any suggestions or recommendations about what to look for or think about in the house-hunting, mortgage shopping process would be helpful!
Comments
4 responses to “A Theology of House Buying”
i thought this was a helpful first website to look at…
http://michaelbluejay.com/house/
not a faith based response but pretty detailed.
Where should you live? How much should you spend? What sort of features should we be focusing on?
I think the answer to all those questions is “it depends”. But since you asked, I can give you some of my principles for buying a house!
-Live near good public transportation
-Research the school district where your kids will go
-Don’t get more square footage than you need
-Consider using a buyer’s realtor
-Try to look past the flooring material, wall colors and other decoration. That stuff is some of the easiest to change to fit your style.
I think it depends on what your mission statement is.
For example say your goal is financial independence. Then there are two approaches.
1. Buy the best investment house you can afford and then sell it later in a few years for a better investment. Keep repeating.
2. Buy the least expensive home that you can feel comfortable in and save like crazy to pay off the mortgage.
Say it’s reaching out to the poor.
1. Buy in an impoverished area.
Say it’s evangelism.
1. Buy in an area that is unchurched. Maybe an area with many immigrants from a country that is unchurched.
Say it’s church community.
1. Buy as close to the church and encourage other members to do likewise. Maybe buy together as a group within a certain area.
The choices seem endless. I see Christians buy homes for all sorts of different reasons though for most it’s simply the biggest in the best area they can afford.
By the way, we pretty much did the buy the biggest in the best area we can afford.