Let me tell you a story. About a year ago we had a regular poster here who was thinking about buying in Temecula at ~$350k. We went through the entire routine, right down to telling him that he could easily lose his entire downpayment and find himself very upside down in the house. We told him not to buy the house unless he didn’t mind the idea of losing a lot of money.
But we also told him that everyone has to decide for themself, just like what we’re telling you right now.
He decided to pull the trigger and he bought the house. End of story, right? Not.
He came back here a few weeks ago and was lamenting how much more his neighborhood had dropped since he bought in, and come to find out the worst case scenarios we were painting for him now appears to be a certainty. So his question to us now was what we thought about the feasibility of him buying a second house at the much lower price and just walking away from the first house – because he just didn’t want to live with that mistake anymore.
You’ll do what you do. At this point it somewhat looks like you came here looking more for validation rather than input. Not that it’s a bad thing to seek validation but you should probably consider the merits of distinguishing between your emotional desires and having common sense. Sometimes they’re the same but often they aren’t. So long as you’re willing to be the adult and live with your decisions then its all good.
But make no mistake about it – buying right now will cost you money. We don’t recommend you spend any more of it than you’re prepared to lose.
And while we’re at it, you can hold off on the self-delusion that you’re buying a home so your kid will feel more secure. I’ve never met a kid who cared one way or the other about who holds the note on the house they’re living in. They don’t want to be moving around a lot but other than that stability is defined by staying in one place more or less, and by being raised by two parents who have a reasonably happy marriage. If you want the house for yourself there’s nothing wrong with being upfront about that. you should leave your kids out of it, though – you’ll have enough to blame them for in the future as it is.
