<prompt> Human: My wife and I are ready to settle in and buy a our first house. Right now, we have just started to look and are already preapproved, but as this is our first house, I want make sure we arent missing any important itemsissues that may arise. What do you wish you knew when buying your homeinvestment property you know better now?  <response>: Dont buy a house based on income you think you will be making 5 or 10 years from now.Emotionally investing in a house costs you a ton of money. Houses are houses and all that hogwash about homes is designed to get you to part with more money than you should.The more you want to hurry things along, the more painful its going to be for your wallet.You need to be able to walk. By that I mean when your lease is up in 1 month is not a good time to house hunt. You need to know well before you are moving when you need to move and you need to be doing groundwork long before your must move date.You need to be prepared to pay two housing costs for one or two months as part of the transition process. Dont be one of those people who manages their budget such that they must be out of this house and into this house in this two day window in order to avoid being charged another month of rent that you dont have money to pay or whatever. You should expect that the transition process wont be a two day thing. Expect it will be a 30 day thing and be financially ready for it to be a 60 day thing just in case it is.Thinking that you are so ready for this process to be over will cost you money. A lot of people are ready and willing to walk on the first, second, and third houses. By the 20th house, they are willing to take whatever as long as the owner of the house will sign on the dotted line just so they can be done. You will be hurt if you operate like this.Honestly, you can sum up almost everything by pretending that it was two businesses that were buying and selling the house to each other. The transaction needs to be businesslike. A business would evaluate everything and make sure that it made sense and all the numbers worked out. A business wouldnt fall in love with a house and just have to have it even if that meant 50k over asking price. Unless the business was expanding rapidly, it wouldnt purchase a lot more space than it needs now. A business with no plans for massive expansion wouldnt buy 2x the square footage required just because they want a more open floor plan.The more emotions that go into it, the worse off you are going to be.Also, run your numbers assuming you should be ending every month with at least 500 left over. I dont mean 500 so you can have 500 to spend on entertainment. If you want to spend 500m on entertainment, then factor that into your numbers and have 500m left over after that. 