[quote=AN]I might be on the conservative side but if I’m in your shoes, I’d buy a cheaper house (~$350k) that would be at or close to cash flow neutral. If I have $52k to down right now, downing 20% for a $350k would mean you’d have to borrow ~$20k from your 401k. It’ll be much easier to pay off $20k than $50k. In the mean time your payment will be fixed at a relatively low number. With your income, I’m sure you can save another $100k easily over the follow 5 years. In 5 years, you can always move up and either sell your current place or rent it out if the price drops too much. Also, with a $350k house, it’ll give you breather room if one of you lose your job.

I tend to try and plan for worse case scenario and hope for the best. Although the above is not worse case, it’s still very conservative. With your hind of HH income, it would be too long before you save enough to buy a bigger house.[/quote]

Thanks, AN, I always appreciate your practical, well-informed comments.

The only problem I see with your suggestion is finding that place that’s big enough, good enough that is rent neutral. My bet is that we won’t be able to sell it at original price in 5 years and don’t think we want to play landlords. But, yes, we could save 100k in 5 years for anothe downpayment.

Actually even if we could find something like that – if it’s not in the area we want to eventually buy we wouldn’t do it – we don’t want to move the kids again in 5 years when they are in middle and high school. By that time, to buy a bigger house it would be almost pointless. Another 5 more years and the kids will be (hopefully) out of the house….

But, thinking conservatively, AN, what do you think about continuing to rent for 3-4 years until we have 20% down – and buying only in PQ so the kids can continue in the same schools? Wouldn’t that be just as conservative?