“It felt like the biggest slap of buyer’s remorse” |

Illustration by Clay Laucella/Bankrate

Kayla Palmer, 31-year-old Nashville resident, bought a 100-year-old house with her husband in 2018 that turned out to be a money pit. She felt rushed by the real estate agent and misinformed about the house’s structural issues, leading to a series of costly problems after purchase. 

Setting the scene on homebuying

Buying a house is full of complex and outright confusing steps for first-time homebuyers. With so much energy going toward pre-purchase steps like getting preapproved for a mortgage, finding a real estate agent and making an offer, the costs and challenges that come after the purchase can come as an unwelcome surprise.

Unfortunately, it’s a common experience for new homeowners to feel surprised by routine costs like home maintenance, utility bills and property taxes. Bankrate’s 2025 Hidden Costs of Homeownership Study found the average annual cost of maintaining a home was $21,400. Of course, that’s tacked on top of regular mortgage payments, which for many families is the largest monthly expense in the budget.

Behind her homebuying experience 

“The [first] house was kind of like our dream house,” Palmer says. “It was gorgeous.”

But as the homebuying process moved along, Palmer felt their real estate agent asked for signatures on unexplained paperwork, couldn’t answer inspection questions and no-showed on their closing day. Although it’s common for buyers to look to their agent for advice and even lender recommendations, she and her husband were left in the dark.

It took a few months for issues to surface and regret to sink in. Then, “It felt like the biggest slap of buyer’s remorse,” she admits.

While living in the newly-purchased home, the couple realized the upstairs level was completely uninsulated and would range from 100 degrees in the summer to 30 degrees in the winter. Pipes came undone, flooding the floor with water. The neighborhood didn’t feel like a good fit.

A year later, the couple put the home back on the market and got an offer that day. They found a new agent, borrowed from the agent’s recommended lender and purchased a house in a more preferable part of town with a school they like. And in March, they decided to put that house on the market and purchase a third, bigger home to fit their growing family. Palmer and her husband used local mortgage lenders for their first two homes, but they’re working with a builder for a loan to finance their next house — a new build.

Her homeownership dream

Each of Palmer’s homebuying experiences has been a learning curve. She’s learned to look beyond the numbers — for details like school zones, proximity to highways and the structural integrity of the house. She’s also not persuaded solely by an attractive listing.

“If you are looking to buy a house, you should go around your city or your county and know exactly what you want and what you don’t want,” she says. “You have to look past the cute wallpaper and the cute furniture.”

Their new family home is double the size of their last house, which allows them to grow their family and host extended family members for visits.

“We’re getting inspections done on it. There’s been no red flags. It’s been very easy, a little too easy,” she laughs. Hopefully, this home — and the cost of maintaining it — is just the right fit for the Palmers.