Buying a home is supposed to be one of life’s great milestones. You find the place, sign the papers, get the keys. What nobody warns you about clearly enough is how many of the choices made during those excited, often pressured weeks before closing can quietly haunt you for years afterward.
A report from Clever Real Estate found that roughly four out of five buyers who purchased a home in 2023 or 2024 have at least one regret about their purchase. That’s a striking number, and it suggests the problem isn’t just bad luck. It’s patterns. Here are ten of the most common decisions that lead homeowners to look back with a grimace.
1. Skipping or Waiving the Home Inspection
Data from the National Association of Realtors shows that roughly one in four buyers waived an inspection contingency at the peak of competition in 2021, with that figure climbing to nearly one in three by mid-2022, before falling to around one in five by late 2024. In the frenzy to win a bidding war, many buyers decided the inspection wasn’t worth the risk of losing the deal. That logic often falls apart six months later.
Nearly one in four homeowners surveyed had waived their home inspection before purchase, and among those, nearly a quarter regretted it, with a large share saying it didn’t save them money in the long run. Houses can have hidden issues that end up costing buyers tens of thousands of dollars. A professional inspection is not just a formality. It’s often the only chance a buyer has to genuinely understand what they’re purchasing.
2. Underestimating the True Cost of Ownership
Hidden costs like property taxes, homeowners insurance, maintenance, repairs, HOA fees, and utilities can add between $16,000 and $21,000 per year on top of the mortgage payment, catching many buyers completely off guard. Most buyers budget for the mortgage. Very few budget for the full picture that comes with it.
Bankrate’s 2025 Homeowner Regrets Survey found that owners with regrets most often cited maintenance and other hidden costs being more expensive than they expected, with that concern topping the list at well over two in five respondents. Over one in ten homeowners regret spending as much as they did on their home, and nearly one in four didn’t budget for closing fees. Furthermore, more than a quarter didn’t realize their property taxes would fluctuate and likely increase over time. These aren’t exotic expenses. They’re the ordinary costs of keeping a home standing.
3. Buying Too Small for Their Long-Term Needs
The home being too small was the second most common source of regret among homeowners surveyed, and notably, regrets over home size tend to increase the longer the home has been owned – which shows that buyers initially focus on cost and condition, then shift to space as family size and lifestyles change. What feels fine for two people can feel genuinely cramped once children, a home office, or aging parents enter the picture.
Buying too small of a house was cited as a regret by roughly one in five homeowners who had any grievances about their purchase, making it one of the most persistently felt long-term complaints. Many homeowners start to feel remorse when they realize the home is too big, too small, or doesn’t have most of the features they wanted, often because they weren’t clear from the start about their actual must-haves. Lifestyle needs evolve. The square footage doesn’t.
4. Choosing the Wrong Location
According to a survey by Real Estate Witch, millennials in particular regret buying in a bad location, in a bad neighborhood, in an area that has changed too much, or feeling like they outgrew their home too quickly. Location is the one thing you truly cannot renovate. You can repaint walls, replace flooring, and gut a kitchen. You cannot move the neighborhood.
Beyond the common regret of a bad location, other prevalent location-related concerns include bad neighbors, which ranks among the top sources of buyer disappointment alongside high interest rates and expensive mortgages. The neighborhood is as important as the home itself, and failing to research the area properly can lead to deep dissatisfaction well after moving in. Walking through a home a few times on a sunny weekend afternoon gives you almost no real information about what daily life there actually looks like.
5. Making an Emotionally Driven, Rushed Decision
Roughly two in five first-time homebuyers felt pressured to make a homebuying decision quickly, and those who felt that pressure were nearly three times more likely to experience buyer’s remorse afterward. The fear of missing out on a property is a powerful motivator. It is also one of the most reliable paths to long-term regret.
Making a home purchase primarily on emotions and without careful consideration of needs, lifestyle, and practical factors can lead to regret later on. Rushing the homebuying process is, in fact, the second most common regret among first-time homeowners, as many don’t realize until moving in that the property doesn’t meet their long-term needs or that they overlooked important features in the excitement of the purchase. Slowing down feels costly in a hot market. Speeding through it often costs far more.
6. Ignoring HOA Rules and Rising Fees
HOA liens totaled nearly 285,000 in 2025, up over eight percent from the year prior, with Florida, Texas, and California leading the activity. Many buyers glance at the monthly HOA fee and move on. Few read the CC&Rs closely enough to understand what they’re agreeing to, or how quickly those fees can escalate.
HOA fees can range from $100 to over $1,000 per month depending on the community, and what many buyers don’t realize is that those fees can increase over time, with HOAs also able to levy special assessments – one-time charges for major repairs like a new shared roof or parking lot repaving. Between 2022 and 2025, HOA-related foreclosures jumped by roughly half nationally, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. That’s a serious consequence of a fee structure many buyers treat as a minor line item during negotiations.
7. Overstretching the Budget to Land the House
Even after navigating higher mortgage rates and a limited supply of listings, a large majority of recent buyers had regrets about their purchase, and more than two in five of that group said they have struggled to make on-time mortgage payments. Buying at the absolute ceiling of what a lender will approve can feel like a win on closing day. What follows is often a slow, grinding financial squeeze.
First-time buyers earning less than $50,000 per year were fifty percent more likely to regret their home purchase than those earning over $100,000, which points to a real connection between financial margin and post-purchase satisfaction. Being house poor creates long-term financial stress that compounds in ways that are hard to predict when you’re caught up in the excitement of a purchase. Leaving some breathing room in the budget isn’t just prudent. It genuinely changes how homeownership feels day to day.
8. Buying a Fixer-Upper Without a Realistic Plan
The most common regret among homeowners is buying a home that requires too much maintenance, with more than one in four buyers saying they were shocked at the cost and time needed to maintain their property. A fixer-upper on a quiet street can look like a smart deal on paper. The gap between cosmetic work and structural repair, however, is enormous and easy to misjudge.
Eighty-three percent of homeowners dealt with at least one unexpected maintenance issue in 2024 alone. Among millennial homeowners, thirteen percent specifically cited regret about buying a fixer-upper as one of their top disappointments after purchase. Renovation timelines stretch, costs balloon, and the stress of living inside a construction project is something no listing photo ever prepares you for. A realistic budget, written down with contractor quotes before closing, is the only real antidote.
9. Overlooking the Commute and Proximity to Daily Life
The 2020 pandemic sparked a remote work wave that convinced many urban renters to relocate to distant rural suburbs, with buyers purchasing sprawling properties located hours away from their physical offices and established social circles. The assumption that working arrangements would stay flexible turned out to be fragile. Companies subsequently mandated returns to the office, forcing these new homeowners into demanding daily commutes.
Even outside of that specific scenario, commute time is one of those factors that people consistently underweight when touring homes. A thirty-minute drive feels manageable on a test run. Five days a week, year-round, in traffic, it becomes a significant drain on energy and time. A Yahoo Finance report highlighted that roughly three-quarters of homebuyers often harbor regrets, with some specifically citing the challenges of unexpected location drawbacks as a primary source of dissatisfaction. Proximity to work, schools, and daily errands deserves at least as much weight as the kitchen layout.
10. Neglecting to Research Property Taxes and Insurance Costs
More than a quarter of first-time homebuyers didn’t realize their property taxes would fluctuate and likely increase over time, while another sixteen percent didn’t budget for HOA fees at all. Property taxes are not a fixed line item. They respond to local reassessments, rising home values, and municipal budget decisions, none of which a buyer controls after closing.
Homeowners insurance premiums have grown by roughly a quarter nationwide from 2021 to 2024, partly reflecting rising home prices but also driven significantly by the growing frequency of extreme weather events and natural disasters. In coastal or flood-prone zones, insurance premiums can actually double within the first twelve months of purchase. Buyers who locked in their budget based on initial estimates, without accounting for future increases in either taxes or insurance, often find themselves squeezed in ways that feel completely outside their control. Understanding both before signing protects you from one of the quieter but most persistent sources of homeowner regret.
The patterns running through all ten of these choices share a common thread: decisions made quickly, under pressure, with incomplete information, in a moment that feels far too exciting to slow down. The market today, with more inventory and longer listing times, gives buyers more room to think carefully than they’ve had in years. That breathing room is worth using.
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