Buying A Home
Mrs.JK
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Buying first home not forever home
Currently we are renting a townhouse. I work full time. I am planning on going back go school next year to get my masters. I will be going to school part time while continuing to work full time. Our rent is insanely high! We could buy a similar place or bigger for $200-400 less a month.
My question is would you buy a duplex or small home with the idea of only living there for 5 years? It will be 4 years until I am done with school. With us expanding our family we need a bigger place. It's next to impossible to find a place to rent here that is 3 bedroom, decent neighborhood and schools, etc.
Re: Buying first home not forever home
Goodlcuk
We did that in 2006 and still haven't sold our townhouse
I know we bought at the worst time possible, but our life would be so much easier if we just continued to rent. There's no guarentee that you will be able to get rid of your starter home when you are ready for your forever home.
We had more than grown out of our 3 br, 1.5 bath house and decided after 2 years on the market to just rent it out. We are in the process of buying our forever home. It's very stressful to think of carrying 2 mortgages inbetween renters, but we saved enough to take care of that if need be.
I LOVE the house we are buying, but if we didn't have a second house we could have gotten something even better. Live and learn, I guess.
So, to answer your question, no. I would continue to rent until you can buy a house you love and don't plan to sell so soon.
Don't buy unless you plan to be in it for at least 7-10 years.
Also, smaller homes and duplexes can be harder to resell since there is smaller pool of buyers typically looking for them.
When you do buy, get a home that you could easily make your forever home if you needed to.
If your rent is so high, consider moving to a different rental.
I almost could have written this, except our starter home was purchased by my hubby in 2005 before he met me. It was awesome in our early 20s, but once baby came and we needed more room it was a nightmare. Had it on the market for a year at 10K less than he paid for it (and after putting 10k worth of improvements into it) and never even got one offer. We put it for rent a couple months ago, which is working out well so far, but it's still very early. We closed on our "forever" house in May but, like pp said, we could have gotten something bigger and better had we not been stuck with two mortgages. We, like many people, assumed we'd be able to claim the rental income and it wouldn't affect our ability to qualify for another home, but it doesn't work that way anymore. You need to have documented history of rental income for 1-2 years and significant equity before the bank will count your rental income. So, unless you want to spend some time paying someone else rent while another family leases your house, you have to count your mortgage payment on the rental as a liability without being able to use the income generated from it.
Yeah, I wouldn't buy a house again thinking we'll only be there for a few years. We purchased in 2010 and are now being relocated, and I really wish we didn't have to worry about what to do with the house. We've decided to put it up for sale OR rent, but it's still a mountain of headaches on top of the packing, apartment hunting, etc. in the new place.
Have you looked at renting a single-family home? I would really start by searching there before jumping to the conclusion that you need a house. I especially think that since your wee one is still "wee" you will want different things in a house a few years from now compared to what you will want now.
You can hire a real estate agent to help you find a better place to rent. I would really go that route because otherwise you might regret buying something that doesn't suit you in the long run.