Hi Mustachians,
I've been starting to have the serious conversations with the SO on buying/renting. We are planning on waiting until after the wedding to purchase. I just recently started at a position at $120k/yr + 7% bonuses and she is around $50k/yr. Currently my savings is light, due to the fact I have aggressively paid down my bad choices down to $4k that is on a 0% card which is that way until May. Now that I got the majority of debt out of the way I am able to put away ~3.5k a month myself. So by next October I should be able to sock away close to 35-40k. This is including 10% 401k, maxing roth IRA contributions.
For a general idea.. I used rocket loans to get some rough numbers. Since we are looking at having kids in 2019/2020 she wants to move next year once.. and stay there 10+ years. I can't talk her into renting to save 60-70k for 20% down.
300k house - 2600 a month including property taxes with 30k due at closing for down payment, closing costs, escrow. 3500 with the rest of bills, car note, insurance, phone, tolls, gas etc.
200k townhouse - 1800 a month including property taxes, HOA with 18k due at closing. I'm basically at 3k a month now with my current single family home rental.
My likes: No yardwork, snow shoveling, maintenance in general, lower cost of living area as taxes are a pain out here. 45 minute drive to and from work and 30 minutes from family. A fence would be nice to have but I've taken my outside on a leash every day for the past 6 years so that part I don't mind.
Her likes/must have's: Big fenced yard, updated kitchen with open floor plan, hardwood floors throughout(every place has carpet here for some reason still it seems. I'm with her on floor plan but I could slowly do renovations after saving). <10 minutes from parents for when we have kids and she has to be close to friends. Drive to work is shorter for me same distance for her.
Now we've pretty much fought about this every time we talk about it which brings me here to get outside opinions.
1 - Am I unreasonable for wanting to stay in a lower COL area with better prices/taxes?
2 - With having kids, is 30 minutes a never ending drive to a parents house? We would be about 10 minutes from my mom, 30 minutes from hers. We will also pretty much be home 5 days a week between us with working from home days by then.
3 - What would your thoughts be on "I need to be close to my friends"? IMO I do what's best for me I would never consider holding my future back for friends since I already did it once. A 30-45 minute drive at this point in life doesn't seem bad to me either.
4 - Am I also unreasonable for not wanting to do yardwork? I'm gone from 630am-630pm M-F. My only me time is weekends so to not spend it doing yardwork would be awesome