My wife and I bought a beautiful 5 bed 5 bath 3200SF single family home in the suburbs of a MCOL area, thinking we wanted to start a family. We bought this place for 540k a little over a year ago with a 6% interest rate. Realistically similar homes in the area are now selling for closer to 580-600k.
We are late 20’s and decided that we aren’t ready for kids and may not want them at all. We had always planned to adopt from day 1, so time running out isn’t really an issue for us.
We are looking to downsize to a 2 bed 2 bath condo or 3 bed 2 bath house in order to make our commutes shorter. Mine would go from 1 hour down to 30 minutes and my wife’s from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes. Well the problem we are facing is that houses and condos that would shorten our commutes around 475k, meaning that our mortgage payment would be the exact same with the HOA. A single family home would cost about 600-700k.
We make decent money at 270k, but we aren’t really sure that moving so soon would be worth it with having to pay selling costs and down payment for the new home. We also aren’t crazy interested in the 600-700k price point, as it’s really expensive.
Should we move, or suck it up and just stay put for the next 5-10 years?
Would like to downsize and move closer to work, where do I go from here?
byu/No_Fennel3756 inRealEstate
Posted by No_Fennel3756
3 Comments
Move. Paying another 100K isn’t bad and with your incomes, you can certainly make it work. Long commutes are soul sucking, not to mention a waste of time, money, and fuel. So move close to work.
Honestly with only saving 30-45 min total commute time and breaking even on payments, I’d probably just stick it out for a few more years. The transaction costs alone would eat up most of your equity gain, and you’d be starting the mortgage clock over again
if you’re not in a HOA now, keep your place and just continue making the commute you make, you’ll be ahead in the long run. It might even be cheaper to keep your place and get yourselves a 1 br apartment between your workplaces to stay at during the workweek. My brother and sister in law did that years ago and when the work situation changed (which, too long to write about now, it did) they gave up their apartment and went to full time in their house. They constantly bring up at family gatherings about how so glad they are that they didn’t sell the house and get a smaller more expensive place because it was convenient at the time. That’s my 2 cents worth, good luck to you n