We are very moderate mustachians, hoping to retire in mid-fifties, currently mid-30s. We were living and renting in a PRICEY city where it made no sense to buy, so a year ago we moved for same-paying jobs in a lower COL small town area. We started renting and watching the housing market, which is very strange out here. My max comfortable budget is 225k for something that needs very little work, but we are very willing to buy a less expensive home that might need moderate work. But almost everything here is around 170k or lower needing a LOT of work and/or something major that we want is missing (garage, yard, location, etc). OR houses seem to be 250k+ and just ok. Almost every home in our ranges tends to sit on the market for months, so we've been able to walk through many of them so far. Sad to say we have very little home repair skills and even less time to learn with our 1 year old and jobs, though I would love to...
Something finally came up that is lower in our range (180k) and fits our wants/needs as advertised, which we are realizing is very rare for this area. Our offer was accepted (just as another offer was brought forward - we got "first dibs"). We can pay for some repair jobs right away, then save for 4-5 years for bigger updates. However the home was advertised as having a "newer roof" (roof is 14 years old, common opinion around here is that roofs last about 25-30 years), but the inspector found soft spots and doubts the roof can make another 3 years - we're in New England. We asked the seller's agent to find out if the roof had a warranty and she immediately responded that "it's got another 3 years so there's no reason to repair it right away, but they can hire a roofer to check if they want a second opinion". I'm interpreting this as "the seller won't budge on the accepted offer," but that means we can't afford to do the other random repair jobs the inspector found plus a roof in three years without living on the edge for 6 months to a year. And we're not comfortable hiring a roofer when the inspector clearly said three years MAX.
I'm wondering how we determine what our "walkaway" point is, since this is a weird market and there is NO telling if any house that so closely matches our wish list will come up again any time soon. Do we swallow our pride and pay up to take the home as-is, knowing something else has to give, like getting our student loans paid off early? Or do we say no and have faith that another home is out there... even though our research has shown that in the past three years, very, very little has come up like this house? Thanks all.
