(Apologies for the long post!)
Hi all,
My wife and I are looking to buy a home sometime in the next year or two, looking for some general discussion and thoughts.
Background and location Info:
-I'm a 27 year old Mechanical Engineer, wife is a 26 year old Pharmacist.
-Currently we live in a 2bd. apartment in Baltimore County, in the Sparks / Hunt Valley / Cockeysville area specifically for about $1300 a month. We like our apartment thankfully, although it was really one of the only complexes in the area that allow more than 1 pet anyway (we have 2 dogs).
-I have about a ~10 minute commute, my wife has about a ~15 minute commute in the other direction. I work the standard 8-5 M-F, she works day or night shifts and every other weekend.
High-Level Financials:
Gross Income: Little over $200k
Annual Savings:
-2x Maxed 401k's ($36,000 + employer matches)
-2x Maxed Roth IRAs ($11,000),
-HSA ($3,350 - maxed for me, added wife to insurance but haven't maxed for her yet).
-Aggressively saving for house down payment ($2000 per bi-weekly paycheck, so $52,000 / year)
Net Worth: About $250k (spread among above accounts, roughly 170k in 401k's and 36k in IRAs, 18k VTSAX in a brokerage I dropped a windfall in but haven't been contributing to)
Current Cash on Hand: 10k Emergency Fund, 16k in House Fund.
Debt:
None (!), student loans paid off, (unmustachian) wedding paid for, I drive a paid off 2006 Camry with 110k miles, she drives a paid off 2002 Celica with 130k miles.
So now to the meat of my questions:
We're starting to look at buying a house within the next year or two. Planning on having children (one to two TOPS - I realize this means I'll probably get quadruplets) in the ~3-4 year timeframe.
We live in a relatively HCOL area with respect to the Baltimore suburbs (Median sale price low 300s - although nothing like North Jersey / NYC Suburbs like where we grew up).
However, we do absolutely love the area.
I'm not interested in paying PMI so I'm looking to put 20% down.
Townhomes (or rowhomes as they're sometimes called) are very popular in this area and I'm not particularly interested in sharing walls anymore after nearly a decade of living in apartments throughout college and my professional life.
These tend to run in the $200-300k range. New or recent construction if possible is also fairly desirable for us as we'd prefer to not worry about a lot of 'fixing up / renovation' when we're starting our family. The issue is that a lot of the new single family homes popping up around here tend to be 5,000 sqft >$1MM McMansions which is obviously not at all what we're looking for.
More affordable (but still probably facepunch-worthy exploding volcano of wastefulness) houses can be found 'nearby' in Owings Mills, Reisterstown, but that increases our commutes to approximately ~20-30 minutes plus the risk of traffic.
On the other side of I-83, Fallston, Bel Air are more 'rural / peaceful' but all the new construction are primarily McMansions and an even longer commute (35-40 minutes)
From asking around at work... which may not be the best idea because of the 'Overheard at work' thread... some associates live ~30-40 minutes away across the state line in Pennsylvania like Shrewsbury or York and enjoy a $200k "savings" on an equivalent property. (punches self in face and re-reads the true cost of commuting article).
In short, we're relatively new to the area as of a year ago and are not lifelong Marylanders, looking for general advice, insight on areas, face punches, etc. Thanks in advance!