Don’t listen to people who do this all the time unless they’re really breaking it down for you

We had a great broker who was also a contractor so she had a lot of knowledge, but she also made doing renovation work sound easy breezy. And for her, I think it would have been, because she does it all the time. But as people who had never owned and knew nothing about permits and pipes and amperage, and already had full time jobs, it really screwed up our expectations. Suffice to say, if I had any kind of timeline by which I needed to move in and couldn’t afford to pay mortgage on the new place plus rent on the old place at the same time easily, I would not buy a place that needs any work before you move in. You don’t know what you don’t know—-and it’s a lot!