I bought my dream home, but the difficult process and higher cost sometimes make me wish I'd stuck with renting

• Interior designer Chelsey Brown bought her first home this year and was excited to fix it up.
• People often make purchasing and renovating a home seem easy on social media, Brown said.
• Brown has contended with higher costs and various challenges that were harder than she expected.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation Chelsey Brown, 31, an interior decorator and entrepreneur who recently bought her first home in New York City after being a renter for years. She has written one book about making upgrades to rented homes and another about making the most of small spaces on a budget. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.

I always knew from the moment I graduated college that I was eventually going to buy something in the city.

I loved New York. There's no other place I would want to be.

I'm not a suburban girl. I love being able to leave my house, walk anywhere, and have everything near me.

Plus, because I am in the design world, I felt like this is my time to buy a place and make it my own.

There are limits to renting. I preach that you should turn a rental space into your home, and I truly believe that you can. But, obviously, there is more you can do with your home when you own it.

I was looking for a place to buy for two years. Luckily, the sellers of my apartment really needed to move, so I was able to put in an offer under asking. It was just a really good situation, and it worked out perfectly.

I will say this: For someone who has a really flexible budget, that timeline is going to significantly decrease — because the more money you have, the easier it is to find a place. I didn't have that luxury.

I'm lucky enough to be able to afford to buy in New York, but I had to be extra careful with where my money was going.

I didn't want to just buy to buy. I wanted to buy a place that I could live in for a good amount of years and put love into.

The upfront costs of buying are always larger than you think

You see so many real-estate agents on social media preaching that buying is easy — that if you rent, then you might as well buy because what you're paying in rent you can put toward your mortgage.

You always hear that spiel.

My mortgage now is $2,000 more expensive each month than any rent that I've ever paid.

It's not that simple. You need to put at least 10% down — sometimes you have to put 15% or 20% down. And aside from the deposit, you have your closing costs — and your closing costs are going to be so much more expensive than what any real-estate agent is going to tell you.

If you know you're going to be in New York for the foreseeable future, then yes, try and buy something because it sucks having to pay a landlord for years and years and years.

I couldn't afford to do all the renovations I wanted immediately

I knew I was going to put my touch on whatever I got, but also I wanted to increase the value of whatever I was getting.

The best way to do that is to get something not renovated, which I did.

That scares me and excites me.

I wanted to renovate the office. I wanted to renovate the bedroom. I wanted to do a full kitchen renovation. I wanted to remove the popcorn ceilings. I wanted to do all the window treatments.

Obviously, I didn't have the budget to do all of those things. So I'm just tackling each project one by one, trying to turn this place into my home.

I did renovate the bathroom before I moved in.

I had to gut the bathroom down to these studs — you could see the concrete from the inner building; that's how gutted bathroom had to be.

I had this blank canvas, and for the first time I was renovating my own bathroom from scratch and not someone else's.

It was so nice to have the creative freedom with it, which is why I went super bold. I went so bold, so funky, so colorful on my bathroom — because I could. I'm still giddy about it.

I did a custom marble sink and designed it myself. Originally, I was going to create the sink from a full slab of marble — that's how you would normally do it — but that would have cost between $15,000 and $25,000.

I knew I wanted that sink, so I ended up getting a fabricator overseas who could do it for $2,500 — the full sink and the marble, including shipping. So that was absolutely a no-brainer.

However, I ended up running out of money, so I did a renter-friendly kitchen makeover using all of the tips that I put in my book because I couldn't afford to renovate the kitchen.

I did peel-and-stick floor tile. I added a beautiful antique cabinet. I added antique shelving, painted all of the cabinets, and added a new backsplash. These are all renter-friendly things I did until I have budget to even touch the kitchen, which I don't right now.

I've been preaching for years: Gosh, you can be your own interior decorator. Your home is your home, whether it's rented or not. You should feel so good every time you walk into your home. You should feel happy when you make your first cup of coffee in the morning. Even if you know you have a horrible day ahead, your home should be the one thing that makes you feel calm.

I knew if I left the kitchen the way it was, I wouldn't be happy going into the kitchen every day.

I have to go into the kitchen. I have to cook, I can't eat out every single night.

You can still transform a space without needing to renovate it.

If I could do it again, I would choose to keep renting

When a lot of people buy a place, it's all happiness and glory on social media. No one really talks about the negative aspects of buying.

So that's what I'm doing. It was a lot harder than anyone ever prepared me for.

If I had to go back and do it again, I might choose to still rent because the whole process of buying took years off of my life. No one prepared me for what I was about to do, and I was doing it alone.

If I were still renting, I would be saving more money because my mortgage is so much more expensive than any rent that I've ever paid.

If I could go back two years, and someone were to say, "Would you want to move forward with this or not?" I probably would still continue to rent because renting is a whole lot cheaper than doing what I did.

However, now that some of my renovation is complete, I'm so much happier going into my apartment and showering in my nice bathroom.

Now that I've done the little upgrades to make it feel like home, I don't regret it.

I love my apartment. I love what it's turning into, but there were a lot of negative aspects of this whole journey.

I believe you want to feel happy in the space you live in, whether you rent your own.