(NAPSI)—No matter how thorough your home inspection, the odds are your new house will reveal a surprise shortly after you move in.

That’s why one young woman, Andrea, was prepared the second time she bought a house. Andrea is a digital marketing manager who relocated to Wisconsin from Michigan. Although she had enough saved from the sale of her home, she opted for a 10 percent down payment and financed with a conventional loan and private mortgage insurance.

She explained, “I wanted to have some cash on hand for unexpected expenses. After all, if I wanted to, I could always pay down the principal on my mortgage later with that cash.”

The inevitable “unexpected expense” was a surprising one. Andrea closed on her house in March, and when the snow melted later that spring, it revealed a yard completely bare of landscaping. “It never occurred to me to ask for photos of the house from another season,” she noted.

Consequently, Andrea used some of her cash for a retaining wall, bushes, flowers, patio pavers, gravel and a fire pit. “It was a blessing in disguise,” she said. “Building it up from nothing gave me the chance to make the outdoor space completely my own and perfect for my two older dogs.”

Renovations were the main reason she wanted to make a smaller down payment. It took her five months to find the 1950s ranch home of her dreams. “It is a fixer-upper, but I am using that chunk of savings as my own revolving line of home renovation credit,” she said.

If you’ve been planning on—or just dreaming about—buying a new home, you can explore your options with a calculator that shows you how much you could save (or lose), depending on how much money you put down, at mgic.com/buynow.

On the Net:North American Precis Syndicate, Inc.(NAPSI)