Wantobuy the most constructive suggestion I have would be to run the numbers out in all three cases. Buying the condo, buying the home, and not buying either. In each case run out a few depreciation scenarios so that you actually have some numbers in front of you to analyze. Hopefully by showing your wife some potential savings of tens (or maybe even hundreds) of thousands of dollars, that could help her to realize the reticent feelings you have regarding the home purchase. Usually with couples their is always one person who wants and one who doesn’t. The one who doesn’t rarely has gone through the troubles to illustrate the financial reasoning on paper. Usually it is a one sided argument with the one who doesn’t want to buy sitting there saying, I am telling you the market will go down. Meanwhile the one who does want to buy points out that homes in the area he/she wants to buy in have depreciated by smaller margins in the neighborhoods they want to buy in, then in all the other neighbordhoods that have fallen 30%. This is all to common. It is a pain in the ass to run numbers out on a spreadsheet but it really may help.
