-
Yep. We just can't afford the type/size of home we would want to live in for the next 10-15 years. It's frustrating because our lease is up at the end of April, and I was looking forward to moving, and I had been hoping we would be able to buy (or rent something substantially bigger). But it seems that won't be possible, so we're looking at moving again to a "2-3 year" type place, which is SO annoying. We may end up staying put for another year, especially because we're not having luck with getting pregnant with LO#2 as soon as I expected.
-
Us too! We couldn't afford a bigger place before B was born, and we've saved like mad and could do it now... but we don't want to pull him out of a good day care, and can't decide what we want
Plus other than being a potential flood zone, our neighborhood is pretty nice for NYC. So we're going to be living in a tiny apartment with two kids for another couple of years.Funny thing, I bought the apartment we live in, and a few months ago I sat down and crunched the numbers. Unless we sell it for maybe 50k more than it cost, we'll barely break even considering how much we've paid in interest. It's a great place, but small, and I don't think it will sell for that much. So financially, renting might just be better.
-
We're just looking at moving out of our "starter" home. We actually just paid it off a couple of weeks ago (woo!). We're planning on keeping this home as an investment property, so we can move on our terms, but space wise its starting to feel really tight. Our plan was to buy another "stepping stone" home to live in for 4-8 years before getting our forever home, but now we might be jumping in to a longer term home right away.
-
Well a little different, we own our starter home, but our plan was to move after LO1 was born to a bigger place/more permanent place. However, it's been decided now that we will wait a few more years and hopefully build our "forever" home before she goes to school.
-
Well, we'll be in our "starter" home for a good 10-15 years before we move. But it's not exactly small, by any means. Just not what I'd consider our "dream" home. But there's plenty enough here that we may end up somehow staying, too...schools, etc. Eep. BUT we won't be making a move until it is a really well planned, near perfect one.
-
Up until a few months ago, I assumed I would be like you--a long-term renter until finding a "forever" house. However, in the past few months we've changed our tune and are now thinking of buying a home in the next 6 months or so. We don't plan to live in our city forever, but we'd at least like to be here for the next 5 years or so, and we live in a place where the price of a mortgage + utilities would be less than it would to rent a similar home.
We have absolutely NO idea what our "forever" situation will be, but, as others have mentioned, it will probably be hard for us to get there without buying a starter home as a stepping stone. It may take me 15 years to save up a 20% down payment, but the gamble to me is the what if--what if home prices increase by more than 20% in that time period? It makes sense to have that money invested in a property that will similarly appreciate, otherwise we would never be able to "catch up."
-
We rented and house hunted for almost six years. Saw over a hundred houses. So while we didn't intend to wait, we ended up doing so because we couldn't find anything to buy. We're now in a home we could potentially stay in forever, in our dream town, and I'm very very happy because I do not want to move again, and our place is a fantastic investment.
-
I LOVED renting - it's so easy to call someone else when something breaks. But around here, rent goes up every year, so we were moving every 1-2 years. I didn't like that, and we bought our starter home with the intention of upgrading in a few years. It's so nice knowing that our payment won't increase every year!
But I would definitely have kept on renting for the convenience, if the price was stable.
-
I, also, have to add that I don't think our first home will be a starter home. We currently rent a home and it's a 3 bed/1.5 bath house and 1800 sq ft. I thought starter homes were smaller and usually only had 1 bathroom, which we couldn't do.
ETA: Found the wikipedia definition of starter home: A starter home or starter house is a house that is usually the first which a person or family can afford to purchase, often using a combination of savings and mortgage financing.
So its not necessarily the size of the home but how you finance it. It guess the next step after starter home would be a home that you buy with the funds of the last house you own/sold? Interesting.
-
I don’t believe in forever homes either and I’m a homeowner – but I don’t think it’s “dumb” or unwise financially to rent. If more people had been more financially cautious/realistic, the last housing bust wouldn’t have been as bad as it has been for so many.
One idea (not to push ownership, just another thought) is to buy a duplex or smaller 2-4 unit apartment building and live in one of the units while renting the others. Since you are not adverse to apartment living, that can be a way to sort of have the best of both worlds. Build equity while someone else covers your mortgage. And you can hire out management and repairs, if you don’t want to be a hands-on landlord. (That’s what I do and it works very well!).
-
We kind of delayed it. Many of my friends bought and owned condos by ~25. DH and I knew it would cause major drama with our families to buy a place together before marriage so we waited until we were about to get married and we bought a house that isn't a starter house. We made sure to buy a home that we could live in with kids (e.g. enough space & good schools). I don't foresee us moving out of our home unless we win the lottery or something like that
-
We thought about it, but ultimately it meant something to us to have a house that's "ours." Our mortgage payment is much less than our rent used to be, for a bigger/nicer house in a better neighborhood, and I feel like it is an investment, so I am glad we bought a "starter home."
And really, while this isn't a "dream home" in the sense that it looks like my Pinterest boards, we could live here forever happily if that's how life worked out.
-
We're delaying because we don't know where we will ultimately end up. We've been in the same area for the 4 years we've been together and could have bought a small starter home, but it didn't make sense to us to put the time and money into a house that we didn't know how long we'd be in. When DH finishes grad school and (hopefully) finds a job somewhere, we'll start looking into buying. We're relatively close to having saved 20% of the price range we're considering. We will likely be 31 or 32 before we buy our first place ever.
Luckily we've had a great renting experience for the past couple years. Low rent that includes everything, in an area convenient to school for DH, a responsive, but not overbearing landlord who made an exception for us to have a dog and lets us paint and redecorate as we choose, etc. If not for that, I may feel differently!
-
We bought our first house in February 2012. It is definitely not our dream house but it's great for now. When we bought it we figured we'd stay in it 5-8 years and then re-evaluate our finances to see if we could upgrade.
Well, it's been three years and we just had it re-appraised and it's increased in value by 51%!!! We were thrilled obviously to have this sort of equity in just three years. This makes selling and inching closer to our dream house that much more probable. There's no way we would have been able to save up this much money in three years that we've "earned" with the increase in value to the house. So my advice is not to wait for that dream house but to buy a starter home in a good area as an investment.
-
@Mrs. Jacks: We have a similar story. Majority of our down payment for the house that we just brought came from the sale of our first home.
Plus other than being a potential flood zone, our neighborhood is pretty nice for NYC. So we're going to be living in a tiny apartment with two kids for another couple of years.
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite0
54 comments