Do Buyers Factor In All Expenses? - "Owning without a huge comfort margin is asking for some stressful living."

AG at vancouvercondo.info December 10th, 2010 at 10:00 am- “When we bought our first house, ages ago . . . when dinosaurs roamed and munched on palms growing at the 45 parallel . . . We bought way below our means and thought we were set. No one told us about the 5-10% of the purchase price per year that a used house was going to need in repairs. Stuff had been done by the previous owners, but it had been done very badly. This wasn’t even upgrades. We gave up on even starting the upgrades for four years while we scrambled to get the fundamentals under control. And this was without some of the things our friends suffered with (collapsing basement wall). It took nearly a decade to put the house fully in order the way we wanted it, in which time we paid for it over again.
I like owning. I like taking a crowbar to a wall when the mood strikes. I know it’s just me that college and renting and misery of rental living conditions do not really apply to adult life, but I can’t get that out of my head. But owning without a huge comfort margin is asking for some stressful living, one hiccup from renting again or moving back to your parent’s. We were stressed and I thought going in there was no way that was going to happen.
I learned through this that assuming you will get lucky is not financially prudent planning.”