Why are you giving in to your wife? Just to make her happy? There are heavy, heavy odds that you are going to wind up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars by paying way too much for a house and then having to pay it back with interest, not to mention the higher property taxes that you will be saddled with. What happens if several years from now, the wife gets another wild hair and decides that she wants a divorce? What happens if next year when the recession hits…..you lose your job or three years from now, you decide that you’re not happy with your life and want a divorce? You will be soooooo upside down in this house that you will wind up in bankruptcy court. This is a major problem today: people have to have what they want and they have to have it, TODAY! They can’t be patient even when it makes absolutely no sense to make a major purchase like a house. Dude, it’s your money but you may as well just go down to Home Depot and buy a 50 gallon, metal trash can and throw a couple of hundred thousand dollars in there and start a fire because that’s what you’re going to do if you buy a house in SoCal in this price range this year. Those houses sell for $250-$300k around the majority of the USA. In Southern CA, they are probably really worth no more than $350-$375k (due to the VAT for living in SoCal) and that’s probably where they’re going to wind up within the next 3-4 years. A house will not make your wife happy for a lifetime, especially if the both of you overpay by $200-$300k for it. Let the buyer beware.
