Why You Should NOT Pursue Your Dream Home..!

by Mr. Arvind Jain, Managing Director - Pride Group

When you look at the hoardings &  advertisements put up by real estate developers, the phrase 'dream home' is almost always part of the promotion. And since we all dream of owning our home one day, this is definitely a useful psychological hook to use in property promotion. But what really constitutes your dream home? Let us examine this in some depth.

Home ownership is not a desire we suddenly wake up with one morning - as Indians, it is practically something we grow up with. It is the highest ideal of the Indian Way of Life to own a home, so we dream about ours from very early on.
Usually, this 'dream home' is larger than life, beautifully decorated, in an impeccably planned neighbourhood and the envy of our friends and relatives.

Mr. Arvind Jain,
MD - Pride Group

With the passage of time, our dream home tends to become a little more realistic. For example, most of us have to accept that a bungalow in the classiest part of the city may not be within our means. In other words, the mental imagery of a mansion surrounded by lush lawns and trees lining the compound fade, to be replaced by a spacious, ultra-modern flat.

By the time we have launched our career and managed to save enough money for a down payment, even this picture will have moderated in accordance with new realities such as actual spending power.

Nevertheless, the original blueprint of our dream home tends to linger - and this is where many aspiring home buyers make serious mistakes during the home selection process. The maximum mistakes in this respect are committed on the resale.

The ideal home for you should not be as close a match of your dream picture of it, regardless of how tempered it has become by reality.

For instance, you should not have to pay for the expensive interior decor and German modular kitchen that the previous owner has put in. Nor should you have to pay for two parking spaces when you have no intention of ever owning more than one car.

In actual fact, the factors on which you should buy a home must be:

Price.
Can you afford it, are you getting what you paid for according to the prevailing property market rates, and have you factored in all the hidden and future costs?

Size..

Is the home large enough for you now as well as your future needs?  
  
Locality..

 Is it safe for your, does it have the right conveniences within reach and can you feasibly travel to and from your place of work from there every day?

Investment value..

Will it appreciate sufficiently to enable you to sell it at some point in the future and move to another home?

Is the building new enough to prevent investment erosion due to age-related depreciation of the building?

All these factors are most readily visible when you buy a new property rather than a resale one. Properties in new projects being sold by reputed developers provide you with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) opportunity.

While it may not be anywhere close to your original 'dream home', it is a fresh, blank canvas with sufficient potential to paint a realistic, real-time dream on.

By the same coin, many properties on the resale market are pictures drawn on the canvas of other people's dreams. Often, you have to pay for things you don't really want and inherit structural or design aspects that you cannot refashion to match your own vision.

About the author
Mr. Arvind Jain is Managing Director at Pride Group

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