104 | Homebuying Series: No Plans To Sell

Talk to any realtor, contractor, architect, mortgage broker, financial advisor, or friend about a home and the conversation will inevitably move towards resale value.

“Buy the smallest house on a good street…so you capture good resale value.”

“Renovate the kitchen or the bathrooms… because that’s where you capture the most resale value.”

“If we were to do this renovation…would it be good for resale value?”

But…

What if you had no plans of selling?

What if the resale tail didn’t wag the building-a-life dog?

The equation begins to change.

No plans of selling provides a different kind of freedom when investing in a home.

A quirky layout is no longer a flaw that you’re afraid for others to see but instead a feature that is part of the home’s DNA and your experience in it.

A bathroom renovation might be secondary priority to a play space, because the time with kids in the house is limited and a working sink, toilet, and shower are all that kids need if they’re busy having fun.

An over-budget addition might be hard to stomach in the moment, but the dollars spent will become fuzzier with time as the relationships with neighbors deepen and milestone moments in the home multiply.

Of course, this is not a rubber stamp to funnel every dollar you have into your home.

Nor is it a recommendation to cash in all your chips at once or satisfy every single one of your heart’s bougie desires.

It’s more a granting of permission to ask more than, “How will this impact resale value?” when evaluating how you want to improve your home.

What parts of your home will you remember the most as of today?

What parts of your home do you want to remember the most in a few decades?

If you’re not planning to sell and you’re using money to discover the answer to these questions, I think it’s OK to dance with the risk of over-investing in a home.