Update:
My old dog took a turn for the worse a couple of weeks ago and he is no longer with us :(
So we are working on fixing up the house and hope to have it on the market by September (giving extra time since we will be out of state 14 days this month). Now we are trying to figure out the next step.
DH really wants to have a house built for some reason, keep in mind we're only planning on being here 7-10 more years, hopefully closer to 7. He wants to get with a builder and get a preliminary plan drawn up and see how much it would all cost. Talking last night we both threw out $150-160k max that we would be willing to pay grand total; land, house, appliances, permits, etc. We have no idea what what realistic costs are but that seems in line with what new houses are listed for sale at. But then I started doing the math....
Taxes here are 2% of the property value, interest rates are around 4%, PMI on a conventional mortgage is about .75%, and I took a stab at homeowners insurance based on what we pay now. Basically it came out that the portion of the monthly payment NOT going towards principal is .6% of the price of the house. So on a $160k house $960 per month is expense.
Looking around I've seen houses for sale that might be acceptable in the $80-130k range. With these we would probably have higher maintenance costs than with a brand new home.
Would you:
A) Build a brand new home for up to $160k that we will really like, will have very little to no maintenance on, but cost $960/month in taxes, interest, insurance, & PMI
B) Buy an existing home for $80-130k that we may not like as much, will have higher maintenance costs, but only cost $480-780/month in the above expenses
C) Rent for $650-950/month, have no maintenance costs but will probably deal with being sick of renting before our 7-10 years of living here are up
D) Other options?
No matter what we will stay within 10 miles of each of our jobs and will not be moving until our current house is sold now that the dog issue is much easier to deal with