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I would consider your finances as a whole
1) do you have the funds for a down payment and closing costs?
2) can you put down 20% and if not can you afford PMI (basically your mortgage lender charges you extra for not paying 20% down)
3) can you afford the monthly mortgage on the house at current interest rates of 6-7% including the home insurance
4) are you prepared to maintain a home - clean gutters, fix broken appliances, join home owner association calls if in a condo/apartment
I love my own condo I like to have my own space, but I hate dealing with my neighbors. I do enjoy owning and building my own equity but I also bought at a time when owning was cheaper than renting!
I am a homeowner, and used to be a renter. It's not always worth it to be a homeowner, sometimes renting is actually better. I would suggest talking to a financial planner. Also if you have any friends that happen to be in real estate, talk to them. Not people that will actively be trying to sell you a house. There's a lot to take into consideration, do you have the funds for the down payment and all of the closing costs. Once you purchase the house, do you have the funds to maintain the house, you still have all the bills for utilities, plus property taxes. If the property taxes are high where you live, you're going to be paying a lot for those as well, so you might be spending a lot more than you would be on rent, when you could be potentially saving money. There are so many aspects that go into it, you should definitely talk to some people in person that really know about it, and you can get into your financial situation with them.
I’m a homeowner and have some thoughts. Prior to this single family home, we were in a new townhome. It was so great bc there was no lawn / front or backyard (just a roof deck). The HOA was only $99/month which helped cover shoveling during winter months. We were on the town septic and town water (no well or own septic).
Now in a single family, all weekends go towards mowing, lawn care, landscaping, weeding, cleaning, it’s insane!
Our basement flooded 3 times bc of the severe rainstorms (first ever in the area) and we had to install a generator for the sump pump ($20k).
The issues don’t stop. Please don’t buy single family and stick to something more manageable like townhome or condo. Best of luck
My husband and I were paying $2400/month to rent a nice apartment in the best (IMO) part of town. Then we bought a house (in a worse area) and the payment is about $4500/month - breakdown is $3k mortgage, $1k property taxes, $100 HOA, and $400 home insurance. Most of the $3k mortgage we pay each month goes to interest. So we’re throwing way more money “down a hole” every month than we were when renting. And that doesn’t even take into account the repairs and maintenance aspect of it. We also may want to move at some point and closing costs to sell this house are ~$70k, so never mind haha.
We have two active dogs so having a yard to just let them out into has been great. We also just had a baby and I like not having shared walls so I don’t have to worry about neighbors hearing him cry. We also have 2.5x more sqft than in our apartment. If I did not have dogs and a baby, this would have been a huge mistake. It still might be 😂