NWR: Which would you choose

FH and I are beginning househunting...

We are trying to decide whether we should buy a smaller (cheaper) home or a larger (more expensive) home.

The smaller home would be maybe $50K less, but require less work now. We would be able to live there for 5 years and then either expand or move out. We would have no problems saving money after paying our mortgage.

The larger home, or course is larger, but more expensive and in our price range need more cosmetic work. But we would be able to live there for 5+ years if we wanted to. The first two years would be tight to pay the mortgage, but we would have a big house.

when FH and I were looking at Houses all of the smaller houses were so small and it would add up when we added on.
We decided to splurge and go for the larger house that just needs to be 'updated' (paint, new windows...nothing major).
We figured that if we got a smaller house say for 300,000...it would be figure 50,000 to add on, build up whatever we wanted to do which would be more than buying the bigger house to beging with.
Make Sense?

I personally would go with the smaller house. I'm not much of a risk taker and would worry how I would come up with a mortgage payment with a bigger house if either my fiance or I lost our jobs.

Plus with the smaller house you can sell it after the 5 years and use that money as a down payment to even a bigger house.

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Posted by Meaghan729

FH and I are beginning househunting...

We are trying to decide whether we should buy a smaller (cheaper) home or a larger (more expensive) home.

The smaller home would be maybe $50K less, but require less work now. We would be able to live there for 5 years and then either expand or move out. We would have no problems saving money after paying our mortgage.

The larger home, or course is larger, but more expensive and in our price range need more cosmetic work. But we would be able to live there for 5+ years if we wanted to. The first two years would be tight to pay the mortgage, but we would have a big house.

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Oh yeah....also keep in mind that say for every 10,000 added on to the price of the house, it really wont affect the mortgage that much......I dont htink it would be more tahn 100.00 a month.
Thats another deciding factor that made us chose the bigger house
HTH

I forget where it was, but I read somewhere you should avoid 'starter' houses, b/c not only will the value of your house increase, but so will the bigger houses. So in a few years if you need a larger home, it may be out of your reach.

I say if you can afford it go for the bigger home.

if you can afford a bigger home now id go w/ that....you never know if $$$ and expanding will be an issue yrs down the Rd!