So, my wife, a dedicated non-Mustachian, just came home and suggested that we sell our house and move into my MIL's basement. Her rationale is as follows;
1. our house will be very challenging to sell in anything but the ridiculous, over-heated southern Ontario RE Market we are in now (it is small, it has no parking, no real yard to speak of, semi-detached BUT it is a beautiful old Victorian in the best neighbourhood in the city). We could sell it in a day for a ridiculous premium over what we paid 6 years go. Houses in our price range in this area are selling in a day for over asking. It's insane. It would be nice to harvest the benefits of this market.
2. We can save heaps of money and then wait for a correction-buying a house that we're likely to stay in until FIRE. We would be saving an extra 2k a month, even with paying a decent rent to my MIL.
3. Our house is a long term time bomb of money issues-Calcite brick that is starting to go (common problem in this area), field stone foundation that has been spray foamed, high radon levels etc etc. I want out before those things kick our asses financially (5 years?)
4. It's a nice Canadian-type basement-luxurious by most standards.
5. We can still both walk to work-the same distance to work as our current house (800 meters!)
ISSUES
1. Cats. Small thing but we have 2, MIL has one. I have a tom, she has a tom. Yikes. Not a deal breaker, but a pain in the ass. We also have 2 small dogs and a kidlet. They're no issue, they hang at Nana's all of the time already.
2. Privacy. A year with my MIL as well. She's great and all but a year?
3. Timing the market? What if it's more than a year? 2? That's a possibility, the recent measures taken by the Shirtless One and his crew will deflate the market, no doubt, but no one knows the timing.
4. Would have to pay for some storage. We don't have a lot of stuff, but still a small expense? Not sure how much...
So, reaching out to you folks for your advice. We're a number of years from FIRE (7?), but this won't change things dramatically.
Thanks everyone, hoping you can weigh in!