Hello!
I successfully made it through a twin pregnancy without buying a bigger house. Now we have 3 month old baby girl twins, a 3 year old boy and a 10 year old girl in a 1000 sq ft house. I'm looking to get a larger living space without moving further out.
I've found a beautiful old (1909) house that is walking distance to work. It has been somewhat neglected but has completely new HVAC system including ducting, and some updated electrical. We could easily live on the (1300 sq ft) first floor and slowly update the second (1200 sq ft) as we have time and money.
The lot is big enough to build a cottage in the back for extra rental income:
Here are my most conservative estimations:
Cash after selling current house and paying transaction costs: $220K
20% down $120K
Conven. loan $425K
high int loan $ 54K
Purchase price $599K
Average cost to build a detached 1 bedroom ADU over a garage: $90K
Median rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in this neighborhood: $1400
The conventional loan including taxes and insurance would be $2534/month
The fill in loan would be $257/month
That would give me a mortgage payment of $2791/month, offset by a 50% of a $1400/month rental payment = $2,091 monthly costs to live there. That's not much more than my current mortgage of $1500/month. Both payments are well below 25% of gross household income.
Benefits: 2500 sq ft living space
lower childcare costs from having space to bring in an au pair (saves us ~$1500/month by itself)
off-street parking
walking distance to work (can drop at least one car)
walking distance to nice park
great schools
big fenced back yard
beautiful old house with woods that you can't buy at any price anymore.
Downside: unknown money pit of old home.
potentially buying high in a historic crazy housing price bubble?
ETA due to Oregon's weird tax law, the taxes would be almost half of my current house as well!