House hunting is stressful enough, but when one spouse has a non-negotiable deal-breaker, tensions can reach new heights.

Despite their shared goals, this husband and wife’s disagreement is now threatening to upend their house-hunting journey.

Read on for the story!

AITA For vetoing putting an offer on my wife’s “dream house”

My wife (34F) and I (38M) are shopping for our first house. We both put together lists of needs, wants, and deal-breakers for our desired home.

We both had similar lists in terms of needs and wants.

Multiple bedrooms and good schools for when we have kids, fenced in yard for our dog, no major renovations needed, etc.

No easy feat.

I only had one real deal-breaker. I told her I would refuse to even put an offer in on a house that has an HOA.

My parents lived in an HOA when I was a teenager and I saw the amount of BS they had to go through all the time.

There’s no way I want to spend a huge amount of money and have to deal with that kind of thing for who knows how many years.

The house could check every single box in our need and want list and I would still refuse to even try and buy it.

Fair.

Well, our search has not been an easy one.

We have been priced out of a lot of areas that we were hoping to live in. And the houses that are more within our budget are not exactly what we’re looking for.

We’ve toured dozens of houses. Had offers rejected. Had sellers try to get us into bidding wars.

We’ve argued, disagreed, and fought. It’s not been fun.

Last week our realtor sent us a home that was just hitting the market. She was excited because she thought it was “exactly what we are looking for.”

My wife fell in love with the pictures and wanted to set up a tour.

We can see where this is going…

But as I was looking at the listing, I saw it has an HOA.

I told my wife that I don’t even want to go look at it since I don’t want to put an offer in.

She decided to set up a tour with the realtor without me. She viewed the home without telling me about it, then came home and was all excited to submit an offer.

She spent an entire evening trying to convince me that it’s her “dream house” and that we need to submit an offer before it’s too late.

She said there’s no harm in submitting an offer just to see what the sellers say.

Ehhh…

I told her that she knows an HOA is my #1 deal-breaker and that I find it pretty upsetting that she would go behind my back and do this on her own and then try and convince me to compromise my stance.

She tried to downplay how much of an impact an HOA would have on our lives and told me that “a little inconvenience from an HOA won’t offset how much we enjoy our home.”

But she’s never lived in an HOA. She hasn’t seen first-hand how nuts they can be and how stressful it can be for a homeowner.

Oh boy.

I reminded her that when we started looking, that we both agreed that this had to be a 2-yes decision.

Meaning that if one of us vetoed a house for whatever reason, we wouldn’t pursue it. And she knows that an HOA is my #1 veto reason.

She’s now super pissed at me for vetoing her “dream house.”

She’s telling me we will never find a house that checks so many of her wants and needs and that I should just let go of the HOA thing and submit an offer.

I told her she’s letting her frustration with the process cloud her judgement and she’s taking it out on me.

With emotions running high, compromise seems farther away than ever.

Reddit says he shouldn’t feel bad.

That actually, it’s probably the realtor’s fault.

And that the wife knew these stipulations off the bat, so, that’s on her.

When “dream house” meets “deal-breaker,” something’s gotta give—and it’s not the HOA.

It’s rough, but that’s the way it’s got to be for this guy.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.