My wife and I live in a 1-bedroom apartment in the Bay Area, CA and make decent money. We are living under our means, saving $1.5k/month to eventually buy a house. We've got something like $30k saved.
We will never be able to put 20% down on a house here in California, at least not in the foreseeable future, seeing as how an average 3-bedroom home here costs at least $500,000 and typically $650-750k. Even if we did, our mortgage would be much higher than what we currently pay, and we're opposed to being "house-poor."
We talk more and more about moving out of state. There are small cities in the Western US that still have very affordable homes, even if they pay is lower there. At our current rate, we'd be able to put down 25-50% on a house out-of-state. I like the idea of being able to pay off a home in under 15 years.
However, our families keep warning us that once you move out of California, you can never move back. But, a lot of the cities we're considering moving to are "white flight" cities whose houses seem to appreciate in value at a faster rate than the national average. So my idea is to buy a house out there, pay it off, watch it appreciate, and then if we ever decide to move back to CA, we'll at least have a sizable down payment on a home.
What are the benefits or pitfalls of doing this? Is this a horrible idea?
Submitted February 10, 2019 at 11:47PM by Nightmare_Tonic http://bit.ly/2MXLo2c
