This Big Home-Buying Mistake Was the Reason I Sold My Home

My mistake could help you avoid buying the wrong home.

Years ago, I was on the quest for the perfect home. After looking at an endless array of properties, I got approved for a mortgage and found one that seemed like it was a great fit. It had a lot of features I liked including a nice pool and lake view, as well as an open floor plan.

The house seemed ideal, so I made an offer and bought it. A few short years later, though, I found myself forced to list it -- and go through the expense of paying closing costs for the sale and the hassle of moving.

This happened because I made a simple yet common mistake during the home-buying process.

This was the error I made when purchasing my property

When I bought my house, it seemed like a great place to live and it was -- for a short period of time. But, problems arose quickly when I decided to have children and my son was born.

The master bedroom was downstairs with no rooms anywhere near it that could serve as a nursery. The rooms upstairs were very small and there was a pretty dangerous staircase with very narrow (and slippery) stair treads. The open floor plan also provided no place for a child to play (or for toys to be tucked away). And the layout of the pool and the backyard made it very difficult to close off the pool area while still enabling outdoor play.

The house, in other words, was totally impractical for a family to live in. I hadn't thought of that when I purchased the place, because I didn't have children at the time and I failed to look at the long-term prospects of how the house would work as my life evolved.

When I looked for properties to move into, I had to be very careful not to make the same mistake twice. I found myself falling into the trap of loving properties that would be perfect for my current stage of life with a small child, but that might not work out very well once I had teenagers instead of toddlers.

Since I don't really want to move every few years, I took the time with my next purchase to really think about what I would need both now and decades in the future. This enabled me to be much smarter about what home I ultimately ended up purchasing.

How to make sure a home is the right one for you

It's really hard to picture what your life might look like in five or 10 years -- but it's worth trying to at least get an idea of this before you purchase a home. Since moving is difficult and expensive, ideally you'll want to try hard to find a property you can stay in for a while. This doesn't mean you should put a ton of pressure on yourself to find a "forever" home, but thinking ahead into the distance can save you a lot of heartbreak in the end.