The Hidden Costs of the Bigger House

When my husband and I were building our first house, we got advice from all

directions - the mortgage officer, the developer, friends and family. Many said the

same thing: get as much space as you can, you can always upgrade appliances and

cabinets later, but upgrading square footage is difficult. While at the time we

thought it was sage advise to maximize the size of our home, and with that our

mortgage loan, we didn't fully understand the implications of what owning a

larger home meant.

1) Bigger home, bigger utilities bills. When calculating our monthly budget costs,

we of course factored in the larger mortgage payment. What we didn't do was

calculate how much the additional space would mean to our electric, gas and

other utility bills. It's easy to forget that additional bathrooms mean additional

water, or that more bedrooms mean added TVs, lights and cable boxes, all of

which drive up electric and cable costs respectively.

2) You'll need additional help to maintain it: if you are working full-time, or even if

you're not, keeping a large home clean takes a lot of work. While my husband and

I made a concerted effort to keep the house straightened and clean, with three

children we just couldn't keep up. We finally relented and got some help every

two weeks. While it made a huge difference in our time and our stress levels, it

was another item we had neglected to budget in our initial finances.

3) Landscaping and property maintenance costs are larger: We were advised by a

landscape designer that people always underestimate the cost of landscaping

when building a new home. Their rule of thumb was to allocate 10 percent of the

cost of the house to the purchase of trees, shrubs and plants. Needless to say we

didn't include the price of all the foundation plantings, side barriers etc, in the

cost of our house. Our other realization over time, all those foundation plantings

need to be cut back and trimmed each year once they reach maturity. And unless

you plan on spending a few hours every weekend maintaining the lawn, add in

lawncare maintenance for mowing and fertilizing each year.

4) Additional space means more rooms to furnish. When we first moved into our

new home, we had enough furniture to fill a bedroom, nursery and a small living

room. Calls placed to our home sounded like they were taking place in an empty

airplane hanger. The costs of decorating and furnishing extra rooms can be quite

expensive, requiring furniture, window treatments, rugs, lamps, paintings, etc.

While we convinced ourselves that this was an expense we could pay out over

time, the echoing rooms got old very fast.

Building a bigger home is a great option if you have a large enough financial

cushion to accommodate both the increased purchase price as well as the

ongoing maintenance costs. But if you are extending yourself financially to build

or buy a larger home you should consider how important the extra space is to

you. The trade off you'll be making by putting the additional money into your

home, is that you won't be spending it on traveling, or playing golf, or taking

piano lessons. So think carefully about the size of your home because without

extra money to pay for activities or vacations, you'll be spending most of your

time there.