I understand that there’s calculators out there, and in my situation it would likely lean towards renting.. I have a few intangible factors that are tough for me to take into consideration:
Some background:
- Married (32M, 27F)
- Wife is 3 months pregnant with our 1st
- We have been together 8 years. Spent the first 5-ish years leaving in a 40’ 5th wheel traveling around the country for work
- The last couple years we rented apartments. Have been at our current apartment ($1800/mo) for two years
- Since I have always travel and we’ve moved around for my work as a Contractor, I’ve always earned per diem, typically between $700/wk and $1000/wk tax free.
- Wife does not work
- My income is high, in 2020 I took home around $325k (incl 401k/match)
- We have avoided buying homes, because by moving for projects, it’s helped me justify the per diem. We also typically aren’t living in places longer than a year.
- Have one vehicle debt with a $550/mo payment. No debt otherwise
- Approx. 840k in savings/investments
Next week I am starting a new job that will last around 2-2.5 years. It’s about 75 miles from where I’m at now. Pay will be around $350k/yr, but all taxed. I believe my take home will be somewhere between $18k-$20k/mo.
Obviously with my commute, and that our lease is up soon, we are going to relocate closer to the new job. We have mostly been considering renting (since we always have) but now that I’m not getting per diem, we are considering buying. If we rent, our rent would be around $2000-$2300/mo. If we buy, we’d probably put 20% down and have a mortgage of around $2700-$3200 (approx 17% of my new take home pay). If we buy, we’d be in much nicer of a house/location than if we were to rent.
Concerns:
- We will likely be here 2 to 2.5 years (could be longer but that’s unknown)
- If we move after 2 years, we could have to deal with the market falling in the meantime, in which case we could consider renting
- We’ve always rented, so not sure how big of a hassle it would be to move somewhere, then have to sell it in a few years
- There is a fair possibility I could get work in the same area (live in the Mecca for my industry) and stay in the area
- This isn’t my FIRE location for sure, but we’re probably around 6-8 years from FIRE
Financially I’m not worried of any sort of disaster (aside from losing my job, the stock market crashing, and house market crashing, all simultaneously lol).
I’m looking for more feedback on the decision. There’s obviously some unknowns, and things I will never be able to predict, but hoping that those with more wisdom in home ownership may have some guidance.
Since this is a new position, we plan on 3-4 weeks of “making sure everything seems good” before moving to the new location and/or starting to look to buy a house. I’ll speak to my supervisor at that time as well.
Thanks in advance for any feedback