move for now or move for the future?

amother

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:36 pm

DH and I are not in agreement on this.

We have 2 kids so far and iyh hope to have many more (maybe 8?), right now we don't need a 4 or 5 bedroom place but if we are buying we should buy a place that works for the future not just for now. It will cost us more true, and we don't need all that space yet but iyh we will. Dh feels we should wait until we need a large place and then get a 4 or 5 bedroom place or get a smaller place now and resell to get bigger when we need. Or buy a house that we can rent out a floor until we need the space, but buying a place that is just for us that has a lot of space is a waste of money because we don't need it yet.
I am just confused. Why wait till we are drowning in tuition and gd knows what and bursting out of our apt, to buy in a market that will be higher than we now to get what we need instead of buying now, stretching ourselves but having the space.

amother

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 12:49 pm

We bought with no children a great 2 bedroom home (with 2 additional bedrooms in the basement).

Now 8 years later we are bursting at the seams.

I'm not sure. On one hand we couldn't have afforded more then, and we can't really now, so we couldn't have bought more. Our mortgage is pretty cheap so we are saving now for a second down payment and hope to rent this home (we bought when the market was high and would take a huge loss on selling - which is a risk you take when buying a home) .

but it is so hard moving, deciding where. I'd think its great to raise children in one neighborhood - they make friends are comfortable - rather then picking them up when older and they have to adjust to a new neighborhood. My kids are still young but really have a chevra here, and I'll feel bad with them losing that. Even me - I know how shul kiddushim work, and backyard edicate, and babysitters, its going to be a pain to relearn all that in a new neighborhood. I would have loved to have just bought a house to grow everyone old in.

I would buy as much as I could safetly afford. If that is bigger then you need - great. Lock some bedrooms and bathrooms so you don't have to clean them.

sorry for my rambling.

chica

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 1:05 pm

Can you afford the larger home now?

I'm not sure where you're from, but generally real estate prices just go up (obviously with dips here and there, but the general trend is upward.) If you buy a 2 or 3 bedroom house now, you may not be able to afford the 4-5 bedroom house later. Especially once you're dealing with tuition and more costs the larger house may be unattainable.

We bought a smaller house because that was all we could afford at the time. Now we would like to move up, but have no idea how we will afford it b/c the prices have gone up since we bought ours.

amother

Mon, Dec 24 2012, 1:24 pm

Quote:

We bought a smaller house because that was all we could afford at the time. Now we would like to move up, but have no idea how we will afford it b/c the prices have gone up since we bought ours.

Its not always true. We bought our home 8 years ago for 300,000. It was by far the most house we could get for that price. Were I live home prices have fallen drastically. we can now get so much more for the same amount of money. and we can get so much less for home when we sell it.