Buying a home is supposed to be a dream come true, and a non-stressful process. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a worried person on the mortgage posters at my local bank. Those happy, smiling people all look as if they came from a relaxing vacation at Club Med where no one has bad dreams.

After going through the home-buying process twice – and having bad dreams both times – I can only surmise that for some of us the process of buying a home is actually a little more worrisome than we would be lead to believe.  I wasn’t able to find a study on the stressfulness of buying a home in the United States, but a survey this year in the United Kingdom found that one in four homeowners said buying a house was “the most stressful experience of their lives.” It topped starting a new job, having a …

Is homeownership still a good investment? A recent survey by the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) indicates that almost 8 out of 10 Americans say buying a house is still a good financial decision despite high concerns about job security and home values.

However, faith in homeownership has actually declined in recent years. The NAR report found that the number of people who believed that buying a home was a good financial decision this year was 68% (compared to 75% last year). And a survey released in April by Fannie Mae found that faith in homeownership as a safe investment has also decreased from 83% in 2003 to about 70%. The recent NAR survey does note that 8 in 10 Americans say that job layoffs and unemployment are barriers to homeownership.

In fact, under the current circumstances some people may find that renting – even for larger homes –  may be a better …

Most of us follow these typical steps in buying a house: Visit the house to see what it looks like inside, put in a bid – and wait. Repeat as necessary. For some of us, though, the process gets flipped around: Put a bid on a house sight unseen – and then visit the house to see what it looks like.