move here!

How did we do it? We scrimped and saved and borrowed $10,000 from my parents and at last had a downpayment. We didn’t eat out, I stopped buying nice clothes (I had enough, really), we didn’t take trips beyond camping or a day’s drive to stay with friends or relatives. We stopped buying fancy gifts for others and we packed a lunch each and every day. It was not the huge sacrifice it sounds like; it just required us to live differently than we did as single, money spending people. The loan from the parents was key – it was interest free – and helped us get the downpayment. We paid it off in two years and by some miracle, never missed a payment to them.

If you borrow money from relative, you can list them as co-owners or proportional owners if you like (or they want). In our case, my parents offered to make us the loan as “silent partners”. I know people whose parents are proportional owners (when the house is sold, they get their percentage of the investment back). I have also known people whose parents supplied the downpayment and the peopel made the monthly payment. At sale time, they settled up. In all cases, it worked out well. But I think it requires a good relationship with your family!

Nowadays you can get loans for almost the entire amount of the mortgage, but that is a dangerous territory. The downpayment is instant equity, if you will, and you need that right away, so try to get 15 or 20 percent downpayment if you can. Full-amount loans usually come with weird, sub-prime mortgage strings attached and you DO NOT WANT to be anymore beholden to the bank that you will with a traditional mortgage.

Also, you can probably get by with less square footage than you want. Your friends will be amazing people who help you with tile work and plumbing and landscaping. You will be amazing people to your friends as you help them install new windows, etc.

And the lifestyle of lunch-packing, cheap DVD renting and never going out lasts a few years after the purchase. The upside is that you can thow dinner parties and your guests can sleep in the guest room or on the couch if they’ve had one too many.

In summary, it’s hard but worth it if you can manage it.

Best of luck and I’m anxiously awaiting the arrival of the baby!

I always knew that someone would have to die for us to buy a house. Morbid but true.

M

We’d have to be an hour commute from my fiance’s job to get a larger house. We have land here, fortunately, so we can build an addition.

I am frightened for people who don’t have some sort of real estate already because I don’t know where prices are going. I don’t know who is buying those houses or how they do it!

to answer your question, when you live ‘out here’ it’s pretty much as easy as picking a house and getting a loan.

i’m sure you two will find something that works. for what it’s worth, i bought tobyjoe’s PHP5 book… so the royalties from that should totally cover your down payment, right?

We had a bit of help with the down payment from my wife’s folks.

I’m clicking on one of your google ads. That’ll help, right? :-]

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses thus far. I am currently adding to this post and will add more of my thoughts here in a few minutes as soon as that finishes up.

Jon, I would move to SLC in a second if family lived out there. In a damn second. Although, and hopefully this doesn’t make you mad, that many Mormons freak me out. ;]

We don’t take expensive vacations and I don’t buy a bunch of crap I don’t need. In fact, most of what I wear as of late are maternity hand-me-downs.

We’re back to square one now that our vet bills are paid down. Hopefully, we’ll be out of here in a year.

Re: housing, I don’t know that we’ll ever be able to buy in this area, but we’re pretty sure we’re not ready to leave it yet. We’re planning to sign up for a zipcar this summer and spend some time driving around to parts of the state that are still within commuting distance to the city and check out our options. I think mostly we are tired of having our neighbors right on top of us (and on either side) all of the time. Most of them are great, but still… a little breathing space would be welcome.

We were in SF for about 6 months and then took off for the East coast. I did notice that while we were there there’d be no chance of us ever being able to buy a place. I’m starting to think that if you didn’t get something about 5 years ago and are therefore invested, you’re kind of f*cked now.

There are a lot of mortgage options out there especially for first time buyers that don’t involve as much down. Since in most parts of the country it is becoming more of a buyer’s market, you might look at something that involves less money down and mortgage insurance. Then in a few years when the market swings the other way you can use your equity to refinance without the insurance.

Anyhow, the best way to stay in the city and eventually own a house or townhouse, is to buy an apartment now. If you can be a decent student of the Brooklyn RE market, i bet you can find a 2BR or 3BR that will last you at least 2-3 years and appreciate over that time. Not to mention the fact that you won’t be giving your $ to a landlord, but instead be building equity. Don’t be fooled by looking at prices from 5-10 years ago and thinking ‘it was so much easier then.’ I’m sure it wasn’t. And most likely, 5-10 years from now, people will be wishing they bought when you did.

Anyhow, the only way to succeed in ‘the system’ is to jump in.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dob/html/bis/bis.shtml

A lot of the developers around here actually sell units before they’re even done, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble tracking down prices.

The thing with buying in NYC is I want a little bit of outdoor space. I don’t want a super small one or two bedroom apartment in the city where I have to get clearance from some Coop board or pay maintenance fees. I guess, what I’m saying is this: I don’t want to stay here and own a place. The next time we move I want it to be outside of the city where I can get some room, possibly a yard, and not have to cater to some coop.

littleruse: Where is that hood? I never heard of it!

(I added the links and blurbs to pricing on some of them if you’re interested in seeing the amount.)

I wish there were some way to fix that.

Everyone: Thanks for the feedback on how this is done/how you’ve done it. When we manage to save some money, we’ll first meet with a broker and work from there. Depending on how much we save, we may have to take one of those 80/10/10 kind of things. (Look at me try and pretend I know what I’m talking about) Who knows. All I know is there is no way in hell Toby and I can save 70 grand in order to buy here. We just don’t make enough to do that and pay our rent and everything else.

So, it’s off to the burbs for us. :] But that’s OK.

We live in the most expensive city in BC, but I guess because we have so many suburbs, it’s a bit more affordable. We bought our house a month after we got married (in 2003), and used most of our wedding gifts that came in cheque form to pay for the downpayment. We managed 10% down, and got more house than we thought we could afford. But in 4 years, it has doubled in value, so we’ve gained a lot of equity. I do commute nearly an hour to work however. My husband only has a ten minute drive, he works out in the boonies out here.

PS: don’t get ripped off by creative mortgage brokering. Do your homework. xo.

It seems that everyone on this block is starting to sell or consider selling. I think people are upset about the 13-story condo building going in. If I owned this place, I might sell it now as well. :[

I wish we could afford to stay here, I could raise our boy, and send him to a nice public school, but I don’t think it’s feasible at all. So, we’ll head to Jersey in time. Or maybe New England. Who knows. For now, I just want to have a healthy baby! :]

I just remembered why I live in the Midwest. Boring but cheap!

The Midwest is cheap, isn’t it? My friend, Gina, said they bought a place in Detroit for pennies. But that’s so far from family. Bummer.