Aren't closing costs something you can ask the broker for or look up on the internet? There must be some number that is generally known to be the closing costs, like 10% of the sum.
I would very much advice you to not buy a house that you can bare afford. And even if you can buy it cash, be careful to buy more house than you absolutely need. We bought a big and expensive house 4,5 years ago and paid cash. The 2 years following the purchase, the stock market has been growing very hard, while my money was all in that house. The value of the house has not gone up as much as the stock market. In general you can count on house prices to follow inflation, after reducing the maintenance costs.
We bought a relatively new house, 5 years old. When we moved in, there were lots of cupboard either missing or being incomplete. We have bad to invest in new cupboards and cupboard doors in the same (expensive) style as the rest of the house. Plus extra drawers.
We have had 3 cases against the previous owner for flaws on the house that he had forgotten to tell us about. That caused a lot of stress. We have also had the paint the entire outside of the house and the entire (big) terrace around the whole house. We repaired a leak in the roof, near the chimney. We installed an extra microwave/oven. All in all quite some investment in both cost, time and energy in the last 4,5 years. And that was for a relatively new house. In our last house we had to do a lot more, like roofing and drainage, and renovations of almost all rooms.
Indeed, a house is a lot of work. If you or your spouse are a bit handy, there is a lot you can do yourself and you can keep costs down. But if you need to hire people for repairs and renovations, it will soon become very expensive. I think the people on this forum who own rental properties, count with 1% of the value in maintenance costs per year. For you own house, you might make that a little higher.
