Hellobee Boards

That was our plan for a while- or if not a forever home, and long term one at least. But then the owner of the condo we were renting told us he was selling and offered us a good price before putting it on the market, so now we are home owners. (In our housing market it made sense).

But yeah that really was the plan until life through is for a loop.

I don't even know where I'd want a forever home to be or what I'd want it to be like. Rent is so expensive where we live, it's actually cheaper to buy (as long as you have a good chunk for a downpayment) so we own a condo and it's only a "for the next 2-3 years" place.

Just a thought, but it might make better financial sense to buy a starter home than to rent for so long. You get better tax breaks by being a home owner, and you would likely build equity if you owned for 10-15 years before upgrading to a different house. The tax advantages also mean that you can afford a larger mortgage payment per month than you can pay in rent.

I don't even know what I want in a forever home lol. But when we bought a house we *did* buy one that we believed we could stay in for at least 10 years, and possibly through our child rearing years. I'm glad our house/neighborhood/area is one that I feel like I can my kid(s) in and I don't think we'll ever HAVE to move (like-- the school district is good and the neighborhood is safe and we have enough space I think). I don't really feel like this is our forever home because.... do people do that anymore? Lol. Also there are a LOT of stairs in our house and I assume when we're old that would suck.

@Mrs. Pen: @looch: Well, you don't really need a substantial downpayment. FHA loans only require 3%. I bought my first house (a townhouse) with 5 percent down.

I just threw that out there because I didn't really have a good understanding of the tax implications until after I bought. I was paying ~$1550 rent in Boston, and my mortgage payment was about $1700 (plus $150 maintenance fee). With the tax benefits it's worked out to being pretty much the same, and when I sold it I made a small profit.

But of course that's only if you want to live in one place for 10-15 years.

We don't have the 20% for a down payment. We have about 10% but that hasn't been enough because there are a lot of people paying cash or who have more money to offer. We would love to stay in our area so the plan is to rent and save. I would love to buy a house but we can't afford a million dollar home (that's what they go for here) and outside of the money we may save as home owners I don't see the big difference of buying an apartment vs. a co-op.

We are not really sure what we are going to do since we are already priced out of our neighborhood but I also don't want to be still renting when I'm in my 60s.

In our area long-term renting just doesn't make sense. We live in a huge military hub, so rentals prices are through the roof. We bought a place last year, and our mortgage is $200 cheaper than what we were paying in rent. Our new house is a starter house, but it is newer and WAY nicer than anything we could rent. In a different market, I could see why long-term renting would be beneficial.

The only reason we own a house is because we inherited it.... and we only technically own half of it. If my FIL were still alive, we'd be renting. We're looking at selling it and buy a new home is 5-10 years. We don't want C to be in our school district past elementary school and this house is not really the house we would have chosen for ourselves. We need to save some more, and get both of us out of school, and then we can look into a "forever home".

Nope, not us! Rents in our city are out of control. Our mortgage is alot less than what rent would be, and that's even before the tax benefits. But in a different market, I probably would also have waited. We are definitely in a starter home right now.

We are definitely delaying buying a home for a number of reasons, but when we do buy a home, in a few years, it will probably be more of a starter home. We are 28 and 31, and are the only ones in our friend group that don't own a home. Most of our friends live back in our home state, which is much cheaper than where we currently live.

1. We don't know for sure that we want to stay in this area. We would ideally like to move closer to family, but we don't know if it is possible because of DH's job.
2. We live in a high cost-of-living area, and are having a hard time accepting the fact that $350,000-$400,000 will only get us a smaller townhouse that needs a lot of updating. We moved here from a very low cost-of-living area, and even though we have been here for a couple of years we still have sticker shock.
3. We still have a lot of student loan debt left to pay off.
4. We don't mind renting, and like the fact that we aren't tied down to a mortgage.

So even though we could afford to buy a house right now we aren't in any rush.

I bought my first house by myself at 26, a townhouse condo, with 5% downpayment. DH and I are now on our 3rd (my 4th) house, due to frequent moves because of work, and have built up equity with the sale each one. Canada has a much more stable real estate market than the US does, which lessens any risk of buying when we expect to be somewhere for only 2-4 years.

I'm a big proponent of the starter house, but still living within your means, so that you're not house poor. I didn't hate apartment living, but I do like the freedom to paint and decorate as I want. I also love gardening and landscaping, and that's not something that you can easily do while renting. When we're ready to retire is time enough for the dream house. At least by then we'll know what really meets our needs.

I love renting. I've done the numbers, and I actually think (and my financial advisor BIL backs me up on this) that financially, buying is not better. You're spending so much in maintenance and taxes that (depending on the market) a lot of people don't actually come out ahead. I don't feel like we're throwing away money at all, because what we pay in rent would only cover property taxes on the houses we like.

That said, there are plenty of non-financial reasons to buy, and we're just now starting the process of shopping for a house. After 14 straight years of moving every year or two, we are ready to settle in and buy a place we can live in for the next 20 years. But it gives me so much anxiety! Our mortgage broker used the words "jumbo loan" in an email today and I wanted to vomit.

We'll see... I'm tempted to continue renting for a while longer and build up a bigger down payment so we don't have to finance so much. I don't feel adult enough to do this (and yet I am in my 30s).

Same as many have stated we still have to save the 20% and are about halfway there. We also want to get an idea what our budget will be like with two kids before we commit to a mortgage. Hopefully in 2-5 years we will be able to buy.

It never occurred to me to buy a starter home! We've been renting and saving for a down payment. I wonder if attitudes are different depending on when you meet your SO? I didn't meet mine until we were nearly thirty, living in a city on low salaries so roommates were a fact of life. Then we moved for jobs etc so just haven't been anywhere long enough to buy yet.

Sorta. We don't want to live here long term so we've put off buying our first home. Though, we've been in this area for 6 years and probably could have bought a house a few years ago. We just never wanted to be tied down to this area and really thought we would be on the east coast by now. Eh, it's life.

Though, even when we do move back east, we might not buy a home immediately so who knows when we'll buy a home. Guess I want to be sure that we'll be in one place for about 5 years. A probably be at a job I like and like where we live. Maybe my perspective will change when we have a LO.

I do want to be a home owner soon.

@Mrs. Pen: I think so!
We rent because we want to live in the city - we could never afford a nice place here. I work in a real estate office and the median price of all our listings right now is $4.4M. Not kidding. (that's not the median home price, but just what my office has on the market right now. median price in my zip code is $600k and at my work $1.1M.. so eh, no)

We will eventually move farther outside the city, for schools, and then it will make sense to buy.

We owned a vacation home in NY and I have to say the break from hiring gardeners (I hate yardwork more than anything), contractors for trees, roofs, electrical, plumbers, etc. has been pretty great. I do not miss that at all. And I'm not a homebody in any way shape or form. To me, home is where I sleep and sometimes eat.
Maybe that will change with J is older.