In your ^20s, you often leave the parental home. I've recently moved into a nice rental house on my own, but I'd love to live with my boyfriend in the future. My boyfriend and I are busy house hunting, and I've noticed that my friends, family, and colleagues all have opinions about every house we're about to view.

Luckily, they also offer some very useful tips. For example, I hadn't even considered that you can simply look up what kind of people live in the neighborhood to find out if it's a friendly neighborhood or a "tokkie neighborhood," as my colleague likes to call it. Another tip I hadn't considered is asking how many viewings there have already been and how much you should offer. I didn't think you were allowed to ask something like that. We've now managed to find a house! That's great, but then the stress sets in, because suddenly you have a thousand things to arrange, like a mortgage, a notary, renovations, the transfer of ownership, and selling your own home. That's strange, because you really have no idea where to start, and there's no step-by-step plan for that. Even then, we get help and tips from everywhere. "Have you thought about a cohabitation agreement and life insurance?" Well, no, but that's going on the to-do list. So this is really becoming a project with a bit of me and a bit of everyone around me. If I could offer a tip to all my peers who are buying a house for the first time: take all those tips to heart, listen to them, but remember that it's your house (and maybe your partner's too) and therefore your choice on how to approach things. Because everyone has an opinion about EVERYTHING, and you don't necessarily have to do it that way. I was getting quite overwhelmed by everyone saying otherwise. One person thought it was a good idea to call a contractor because we still had a lot of renovations to do, and another said it was a waste of money. Just do what feels right for YOU! Remember, it has to be YOUR HOME ;)