Hi r/personal finance!
The Problem
We'd like to purchase a house but are not sure how to balance cost and commute.
Tl;dr: $900,000+ house with 20 minute commute or $600,000 house with 1 hour commute? TIYA for everyone's advice.
The city is a bit sprawled out, and the only neighborhoods within 20 minutes of work are very expensive (starting at $850,000 for a 1,500 square foot house, with the vast majority of houses in the $950,000 to $1.2 million range). Some of these expensive houses are quite nice and decently sized (2,200 square feet), but almost all of them are 20+ years old. The ones on the $850,000 end are really old (1960s/1970s) and basically expensive, well-maintained-but-ultimately-fixer-uppers.
Houses within our "comfort" zone for pricing are 50 minutes to an hour and half away, but we can find nice, relatively new or new construction houses for around $600,000 to $700,000 with an hour commute. The city is structured in a way that there really isn't much in between these two options (it's either 20 minutes or 50+ minutes). We did find one detached condo option for $700,000, which is beautiful with a 35/40 minute commute but is a bit small and has a $350 monthly HOA fee, which seems extremely high. We'd also really rather not purchase a condo for various reasons, but would love to hear your opinions on why a condo is fine.
A possible third option is to just keep renting ($2,200ish per month for 900 square feet) or buy an apartment, of which there are tons close to work (15 minutes) in the $300,00 to $600,000 range, depending on how nice they are. We'd really rather not rent an apartment, given that rent is steadily increasing and its really not that far off from a mortgage payment. We'd also rather not buy an apartment; home ownership is important to us. But we'd like to hear any advice/opinions on this option if you have any!
I've heard how awful long commutes are, and how they just wear away at your happiness over time, but it doesn't feel like we can really afford a house closer in. Since we can get a no-PMI loan (and based on our stats and professions, have been told we can finance up to $2 million), do we just bite the bullet and buy a really expensive house? Do we just keep throwing money into an apartment and try to keep saving up and wait for promotions before we buy the expensive house? Or is this one of those situations where, tough luck, we just need to deal with reality and get a house an hour away from work?
Stats
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Engaged, no kids and likely not having any
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$315,000 combined gross income, not including bonus
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No debt
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$125,000 down payment currently saved (with access to loans with no PMI and verbal confirmation that we can finance up to $2 million - we are going to wait on getting a pre-approval until we're closer to picking a particular neighborhood so it doesn't expire before we're ready to buy)
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Combined monthly expenses (approximate): $3,000 rent (currently living separately and in a different city), $140 gas, $400 food and entertainment, $200 medical insurance, $200 auto insurance, $150 parking
Submitted February 20, 2020 at 06:15PM by oldfaithfulthrowaway https://ift.tt/2V9FocI
