Easy Come, Easy Go
Mar. 24th, 2006 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteNo house for me, apparently. Woe.
It seems I heinously overestimated what we could afford to buy. While we do have enough saved up for a sizeable down payment, our monthly allowance for a mortgage is not quite up to a large, friendly house in the suburbs of Medford. It's more along the lines of 'large friendly house in the suburbs of Ohio or New Jersey,' or 'small ramshackle fixer-upper in the suburbs of Dorchester' level.
I find it patently ridiculous that two adults, working full-time at decent-paying jobs, with no children, can't afford a house in this neighborhood, but such is life. On the other hand, we're also two well-paid adults with monthly student loan payments that total more than most people's rent in this corner of the country.
Darn it, if only I had skipped out on education in favor of becoming a hairdresser at 18, I'd.... well, I'd be making a lot less money. I'm damned, either way.
I know this doesn't mean no-house-forever, but right now it feels like that. I don't want to rent forever, but I don't want to give up the neighborhood here that I love. I've spent the last day or so pouting, doomsaying, and kicking my bed, and I've finally moved on to the point where I'm willing to do something about the situation.
Of course, now I just need to figure out what that is. Short of a magic hand coming down from Heaven to wipe out our student loans, our financial situation isn't going to change anytime soon. And if the hand of heaven isn't going to fix our debt load, it's not likely to whisk up a house in Medford that we can afford with our current funds, either. I could drop all my hobbies and work six days a week for the next couple of years, but.... a house isn't that much of a priority to me right now, that I'd be willing to drive myself that hard for it. And I don't trust the stock market enough to invest our current savings in anything that has a chance of significant payback on that time scale.
I want things the easy way, it seems. And that's just not likely. I need to beat my head against the situation until another answer becomes visible....
It seems I heinously overestimated what we could afford to buy. While we do have enough saved up for a sizeable down payment, our monthly allowance for a mortgage is not quite up to a large, friendly house in the suburbs of Medford. It's more along the lines of 'large friendly house in the suburbs of Ohio or New Jersey,' or 'small ramshackle fixer-upper in the suburbs of Dorchester' level.
I find it patently ridiculous that two adults, working full-time at decent-paying jobs, with no children, can't afford a house in this neighborhood, but such is life. On the other hand, we're also two well-paid adults with monthly student loan payments that total more than most people's rent in this corner of the country.
Darn it, if only I had skipped out on education in favor of becoming a hairdresser at 18, I'd.... well, I'd be making a lot less money. I'm damned, either way.
I know this doesn't mean no-house-forever, but right now it feels like that. I don't want to rent forever, but I don't want to give up the neighborhood here that I love. I've spent the last day or so pouting, doomsaying, and kicking my bed, and I've finally moved on to the point where I'm willing to do something about the situation.
Of course, now I just need to figure out what that is. Short of a magic hand coming down from Heaven to wipe out our student loans, our financial situation isn't going to change anytime soon. And if the hand of heaven isn't going to fix our debt load, it's not likely to whisk up a house in Medford that we can afford with our current funds, either. I could drop all my hobbies and work six days a week for the next couple of years, but.... a house isn't that much of a priority to me right now, that I'd be willing to drive myself that hard for it. And I don't trust the stock market enough to invest our current savings in anything that has a chance of significant payback on that time scale.
I want things the easy way, it seems. And that's just not likely. I need to beat my head against the situation until another answer becomes visible....
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 04:48 pm (UTC)Ahem. Seriously, though, I'm not a huge fan of condos, but with a condo you're putting most of each month's money towards something you own, not just giving it away. That *does* make a difference; it also helps you build up a good record for buying your house. And as folks have said, some condos are actually quite nice -- you just need to be willing to do the legwork to find them.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-24 08:18 pm (UTC)Hm. My mom just sold her three-bedroom house in Toms River for less than $200,000. And is buying another fairly new, quite nice two-bedroom house (admittedly, in a senior community) for about the same.
The average house of that size here in Medford appears to be over $400,000.
Condos.... just feel wrong to me. I don't like the thought of buying something that I won't control, I want a big damn vegetable garden, and I don't want to pay $300,000 for something I don't plan on keeping for a long, long time. If that's the only way to afford a house I'll have to accept it, but I'm going to at least try to look for another option.
no subject
Date: 2006-03-28 07:04 pm (UTC)To be fair, this is only true if you're living in a place for a long time. For the initial years, you're putting only a teeny-tiny fraction of that money towards equity -- the proportion going to equity doesn't start to amount to Real Money until you're a good ten years into the project.
Condos *have* been a good investment, but that's mostly because of appreciation -- that is, since the prices keep going up, you get a lot more equity out of that than you do from the monthly mortgage payment. But my confidence that that's going to continue to be the case is pretty low -- the market is ridiculously frothy right now, and set to drop...