I'm having a house attack, and I'd love some feedback about whether this is even worth pursuing.
We are in kind of an unusual situation. We live in provided housing through my husband's job. We currently pay only for utilities and lawn care. We sold our last house in the summer of 2009 (after buying in 2007) and basically lost 20 years of equity in the sale. OUCH.
DH is 50, I am 51. Our daughter has 5 more years in the private school that drove the decision to move in the first place, and then college. We have a sizeable 'stache which will need to cover education, retirement, and at some point, housing.
A house has gone on the market less than a mile from where we live now. It's the size/configuration we want: 1800 s.f., 3 bedrooms + a small study, 2 full baths, 1 floor, on a 2-acre lot with both woods and "meadow" land. It has exactly the number of rooms we want. The only thing it's missing is a garage, but there's plenty of space to put up at least a carport, if not a full garage.
The house is priced at the top of our comfort zone at $325K. Based on some cursory research into the rental market in this area (which is super tight on small single-family homes), it looks like we could get around $2K/month in rent. Taxes are $3360/year.
In this area, it's very hard to find 1-story houses that aren't ordinary rectangular brick ranch houses. Most of what's in our price range is split-levels in cookie-cutter neighborhoods. So the house itself is particularly appealing to us because of what it offers in comparison to what else we've seen available in our price range.
We're considering buying it as an investment property, then moving into it in 5-10 years. But how do I make sure the numbers make sense? And is it really dumb to think that far ahead? And if we get a loan on it as a rental property, what happens if it becomes our primary residence?
I ran a couple of calculators I found online, and it seems like the cash flow would be almost even for the first few years. But that's with ballpark numbers.
I think the general response will be: "You don't know enough. Go do some research!"
So I'd appreciate any help getting pointed in the right direction.