Who is buying? I’ll give you an example of who in my family is buying and shouldn’t be.
My brother-in-law and his wife should just rent. Oh no – the wife can’t handle that! She wants to own! He is fine with renting but can’t talk her into it. They are closing escrow on a house in Vista this week. Its an older home (I think 30 years old) and needs quite a bit of work. She is very secretive about what kind of loan and terms it has. I guess they figure that it isn’t our business (It really isn’t) What he has told us is that the mortgage will be over $4000 a month. They have 2 small children and now will be having daycare costs since she is now having to work in order to support the house payment. She has hardly any work experience and has taken a few college classes so she is working in retail making minimum wage. He is a professional however his industry has had lay offs and he was laid off late last year and has been at his new job for only a couple of months.
We are very worried that they are getting in over their heads. What if he gets laid off again soon? She is also absolutely ignorant about daycare costs and doesn’t want to pay someone what it is worth. Who will end up raising her kids? He doesn’t have much say in any of it. She wants what she wants and gets it. She also seems to get into petty disputes with her neighbors and probably will want to sell again as soon as they glance at her the wrong way.
She has absolutely no knowledge of how the RE market works but thinks she knows it better than anyone – including her husband! She is buying in a panic that thinks that she has to buy now or else she never can! She thinks that if you are a renter that somehow you are less important in the world. We’ve all tried to talk some sense into her and we’ve all given up!
My husband tells me all of the time how thankful he is that I’m not begging him to buy us a home right now. I’m thankful for my nice, 3 bedroom affordable apartment and that I can stay home with the kids. We’ll get to a home someday but I’m not in a hurry to buy! Also, since my husband is new in his career, we know that he might have a great job offer in another area and it would be so easy to pick up and move as renters. Sure, I’m itching to move out of our home soon since we are having a third child soon but I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars extra just to rent a house with a yard (or thousands to buy) when we can just go play at the nice parks nearby. Its too bad that we couldn’t talk them out of this purchase!
