i appreciate the comments and advice. some of you seem mad at me that I might buy. why do you even care – it’s not your money. I solicited advice – and I got it. I took it all into account. I got advice from other places besides Piggington. Many of you here have great ideas, but NO ONE knows where the market will go. No one. We are all gussing/predicting, etc. If anyone here on Piggington KNEW where the market was going, that person would be a multimillionaire…b/c if you know where the market was going, you’d be rich.
bottom line – i will probably buy. not to spite anyone here, but because it makes sense. i don’t think temecula will take as big of a drop in price as some of you believe.
my decision was based on some facts that had nothing to do with money.
if we rent another two years, and wait for the market to drop – we will potentially have to move 3 more times. a one year lease at another house – what if the owner goes into default and I have to move? then move again… then i finally buy and move to that house. moving sucks. it would REALLY suck right now with my wife being pregant.
the house we are in we LIKE. it’s a tad small, but it’s NICe. and the “small” part is all relative. it’s 1900 sq ft..which to some people is too small, and to some people that would be considered big. it’s small by temecula standards where half the people here have 4000 sq ft homes. it’s big when you consider historically, people grew up in 1400 sq ft homes and that was “Normal”.
i grew up in a 2000 sq ft home and i though ti twas big.
we like the neighborhood. the school. my son is about to enroll in school – we don’t want him bouncing from school to school as we move around.
we like hte house. it has a lot of upgrades, and great landscaping. we have looked at a LOT of houses, and very few have the combination of features, upgrades, landscaping that this one has, combined iwth a private lot. out of this entire subdivision – this is one of the nicest floorplans with the nicest locations. we like the neighborhood we are in. so maybe we lose money over the next 2-3 years. we are getting fixed rate P&I loans, so as i get my raises and COLAs, the payment will just get easier, and i’ll be paying down the loan..i’m not doing some lame Interest only loan…
we plan to stay 10 years at least. that way, if it does go down, we will just sit tight.
we figure the worst case scenario is that if we had moved a couple times, rented tow more years, maybe we would be able to get more for our money. but the costs of buying and renting right now are almost a wash on this house…so we see it as a way we can’t lose.
the only way we lose is buying now, then having an unforsee event force us to sell in the next 5 years – which is highly unlikely.
you can’t predict everything. you have to assess all the choices out there and then make the best most informed decision you can. we have done that…we have gone back and forth and obsessed over this decision for the past month. literally i have had nightmares over the decision….and woke up in the middle of th enight having dreams about houses, prices, etc… seriously. i put that much thought and stress.
part of the stress is that there is NO RIGHT answer. no atter what we chose, based on future circumstancs we have no control over – the decision could turn out to be good or bad. and most of those circs are things that no one can foresee and no one has control over.
in the end, we like the house. welike the neighborhood. the price is good. and even though the market may go down over the next few years, it will come back and by staying ten or more years, in the end – with rent/buy being almost equal…the loss..if any we suffer on paper won’t matter.
i thank all of you for the advice and suggestions. i sincerely appreciate it from all of you.
i will post a follow up over time. and if i get hosed you can all tell me you told me so. 🙂
