'Fess Up. How are you girls affording house?

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Posted by AllyDrew1108
I wish we could move to Ohio - I see all of these cute homes for like $130K on these first time buyer shows on TV.

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What would you do in Ohio?
Besides, I don't think I want to move that far away from family. DH's brother moved to NJ 2 years ago and we never see them anymore. Maybe twice a year. They don't even come back for Thanksgiving or xmas anymore.

We bought our house before we were engaged. We make great salaries, put a portion down...not much. We did not live at home...we both lived on our own from the age of 18. It is hard. sometimes, I actually think renting is the better way to go. Our rent was one thrd of what we pay now!!! You make sacrifices. We have no car payments..etc. You have to do what you can work with. Many people get in over thier heads....You can do it...
Now I just don't know how to afford a baby! LOL

It is hard to buy a house in NY. Everything is so expensive and I honestly dont believe the salaries are up to par.

Like some others have said...save, save save, be frugal, dont buy coach bags and other crap...that never lasts...but homes do.

As for us...DH is a good good saver and bought in Utah and sold at a good time, then bought here (kind of at a bad time but dont think our house lost much value due to our location). Anyway, we are ok though because we wont be here forever (due to DH's job and relocating). Plus his company buys the house if we cant sell it.

My best advice if you arent a good saver...get out of here while you can. Easier said than done but its rough out there and I honestly feel its not fair to our generation...AND I see many people leaving and buying HUGE homes in NC for like $200K!

My cousins moved to NC too for a house $200- but had a hard time finding jobs........you need to have a plan.
I agree though..if you live pay check to pay check now. I don't forsee it happeneing in the near future. Sorry !!

we bought a house about 1.5yrs ago we did it all on our own...
DH lived at his parents until the year we met and I hadn't lived at home since I was 21!
We saved as much as we could while we were renting our apartment and once we found our house we moved home for about 3-4 months until closing and this helped with the rest of the downpayment. They way that we can afford our actual mortgage is that we did the math and made sure that we knew what we could afford and didn't go over that! We planned and researched and then researched somemore....found the best rate for our mortgage and here we are today! Luckily....our parents helped out with the wedding but the house was all us!

Edit:
And wedding gifts went back into savings and home improvements!

I really really highly recommend that you read the Robert Kiyosaki book on how to get out of debt- it will change your spending/saving & how you pay off debt.

Also, dont forget to pay yourself first- before I pay the bills, I put money straight into an account- I have an account set-up with ING Direct- the money comes right out of my account, I never miss it and its really made our savings account grow

Because of the wedding and both of our mortgages we have not been able to save this year.

Our situation is that we both OWN our own places. While I can get rid of mine he can't get rid of his because his mother lives there. So we're pretty much paying for two places and know that we can afford to buy a house in the future. Eventually my co-op will sell and I'll move out to his place. Even though his mom lives there we will sacrifice for a while and pay down that mortgage while savings for a new house. Thankfully I have a very non-intrusive FMIL . Combined we make well over $100K and it's still hard to buy in NY. In many ways the downturn in the housing market is the best thing that could've happened to make housing prices a little more realistic.

As a PP said you have to pay yourself first. After this wedding is done that's what we will be doing. Hey if we could save $30K in less than a year for our wedding we can do the same for a house, especially after my place sells, then we'll have the combined money from savings and from my sale.

Personally I was able to save for the downpayment of my co-op because I lived at my parents house until I finished my masters. I also ket my debt relatively low and followed a buget I created on a spreadsheet. I basically budget my entire year in this spreadsheet and adjust for changes.

Good luck! It's tough but a budget is probably the best way to see your financial present and furutre come together.

we dont own our own home yet and we dont live with our parents (and havent) so it definately is harder to save faster.

but i would say continue to make payments on the loans and cc...the more u can build up your credit the better. its harder to get approved for a morgage now and the economy is ehhhh as far as job stability.

even if u can save a little...and put it in an account u cant touch...itll start adding up bit by bit....ull get there eventually!!!

DH owns a condo, which we sold and will be closing on on Friday. if he didn't own the condo, i have no idea how we would have been able to afford a house. he bought it 8 years ago, so the profit was pretty considerable, even in this market. he was also abel to put down a little over 50% when he bought it, so our current mortgage payment is pretty low.

after we close, we're paying off ALL of our debts, and will be living w/ his parents until we close on our house which won't be until jan or feb. that will give us time to save up even more $$ to put towards the house.

Honestly, I dont know if we ever will... Dh has so much credit card debt, his credit is beyond messed up.. My credit is perfect, but iam not sure how much you need to make to get a mortgage? When he was working we only made about 80,000 combined. We try to save as much as we can, but DH has been out of a job, and its hard when you only have one income. Hopefully he gets hired really soon. The economy *****!!! Its rough for us, but we manage to stay happy through it. Eventually our time will come...

With the wedding over we are finally stting down and taking a hard look into our finances. We aren't in bad shape but there's always room for improvement. Like saving up for a house which we really want to do. Paying down credit card balances.

My bro consolidated his student loans and other debts. So that is something to look into.

I think the best first step is to check out your credit score.

I also recommend the book by Suze Orman. Some good advice in there. It's called the young, fabulous, and broke. Borrow it from the library though!

wedding gifts, 401k...
savings....

09'er Crashing...

I am 27 and still living at home and so is FH. We are stashing away the green while our friends are partying and buying stuff. I have tons of money in savings which will be combined with what we saved together and we will be able to have a nice hefty down payment. But I have to say, we are really lucky. FMIL is giving us the basement in her house and we are living rent free! We are going to SAVE SAVE SAVE for about a year and buy their house for cheap. Then live there for a while until the market bounces up and possibly rent the basement while we have the upstairs and then move out and maybe rent the whole house or just sell. I like that we have options. I know it's hard for people but the trick is to save as much as possible and live on a budget. It pays off in the end!

DH and I saved up for the wedding and actually came in under budget so between that and gifts we are on r way to a house soon i hope, we r actually going to talk to the mortgage guy at our bank today so we will see if we can afford anything.....
wish us luck!

we invested in a co-op a few years back. gave us a great downpayment for a house. baby steps

The hardest part is definitely coming up with the down payment. Many people can afford the monthly payments once they get it but its getting that large sum of money to put down at one time.

Even some apartments if its 20% down and lets say in the 200k's, that can be anywhere from $40k and a bit higher to put down. Some are 10% so lets say putting down $20k is alot easier. Some homes doing the calculation on a down payment, many were $60-80k that you would have to put down, unless you buy it for less than 20% down. Its in those situations where I wonder how people had lets say $60k to put down on a home. Of course if you get it for less than 20% the problem is then your monthly payments will be alot higher so you can run into a problem with that. I won't even get into homes costing $500k or more. If someone saved that much money then good for them and i do know people who have been saving for YEARS. Contributing each month to their savings account for a long time will finally add up. Some when single or not engaged just didnt save as much and thats what the problem is, i didnt save alot either. However, now I know that I definitely can save a decent amount of money even within a year or two. I had to do this for the wedding and was very surprised how much I was able to save in 2 years. Others were just smart all along and always were savers in anticipation that one day they will really need it. So they were just smart with their money. I definitely can say i wasnt smart with money before the wedding lol but ever since i got engaged i became a big saver, and became very responsible with money. If i was always the way i am now then I definitely could've saved alot of money up until now.

Some are able to use their wedding gift money, i wish we were able to use all of it, that would've been all the help we needed. I am also selling my place and have a closing this week. This will help alot but even though we are getting this large sum of money, we are not putting it towards a house at the moment. I was very against renting at first but after going through this one process of selling for 8 months or more, i just don't have the patience to go through it all over again now to buy, i am sick of the process and just want it over with. We also really don't have the time to wait for another closing on buying a place. Bc of dh's new position we have to move to LI ASAP. Our plan before the wedding was to buy a place, and the money we get from selling my place we were going to use on a down payment on a place but we didnt expect for it to take this long. So since we dont have the patience to go through all this again on the buying side, and also don't have the time. We are looking to rent in LI right now. The other reason is also bc we want to see how we adjust to living in LI so this way if we want to move back to queens after a short period of time it will be easier for us to do, also want to see how long he will be kept in the LI office, so since there are no definite answers this is the best thing. I don't want to buy a place and sell it just after 2 years, bc honestly it is not worth it. You don't get alot back when you sell it after just a short period of time, after lets say 5 years or so then you can get back a good amount but before that its pointless. Even with 4-5 years of living in my apartment, i won't even get half of what i am selling the apartment for, infact alot less than half of it. And since we don't even know if we are going to stay in LI, i wont make that investment.

So instead what I will do now is take the money from the closing, we have to use some of it for important things and the rest I will put into an ING account and let the intererst grow. Then I am going to make a budget and set a certain amount to contribute towards the ING account each month. Within lets say 2 years we will see how things are going in LI, and also see if his company plans to keep him in LI or maybe go back to the city or even seeing if dh prefers this bc if so he can ask to go back to the city, but right now he is in charge of all LI jobs, and in the city its different and theres quite a few people in charge of the city so depends what scenario he prefers. Once we have definite answers, we will see how much we contributed towards the ING account up until then and see what type of down payment we could afford. I would prefer to even wait a little longer and buy a house that we REALLY want so having a bigger down payment, rather than not getting a dream home and one that was just less and waiting years to sell it in order to get our dream home.

i do have to say that if we were able to keep most of our wedding gift money and especially in combination with what i will get from the closing, then that would've been ideal and we would've had way more than enough on getting something we absolutely LOVED. That was the plan but things happen and things change and you have to adjust. We wanted debt to be paid off, dh to get rid of his school loans and any debt he had. I didnt want to buy a place while either of us were in debt, so i saw paying off these things as the priority. Some might not agree but it's what we both preferred.