My fiancee and I are getting married this summer and are looking at our living options for the future. First, a bit of background info: Currently we have two one-bedroom apartments that we're spending $470 a month on. We live in Iowa City where we are both grad students. However, I am currently burned out on school and seeking employment. If I get an offer (and I expect to soon) our combined salaries will be approx 40-45k (altough this is of course a guess since I don't have an offer yet hehe). Since she is a first year student we plan on living here in Iowa City another 5 years, though it could be as low as 4. Now the tricky part is deciding whether to rent for 4-5 years or whether to buy a condo. There is one condo that we looked at and liked quite a bit. It's newly constructed and in a booming part of town and costs $86,900. From doing some calculations, it appears to me that the only way this really makes sense is if we can get a low enough interest rate to get a 15 year mortgage. With a 30 year mortgage, we'll have paid so little principle after 5 years that it's basically nothing. If we get a 15 year, however, we'll have paid back $16-20k (depending on the interest rate). Has anyone here ever bought a condo? If so, how long did you live in it? Did you have a tough time selling it? Any other misc advice you wanna give? We haven't actually had an appointment with the realtor yet to talk about details (that's next week) but I think I have a pretty decent grasp of risks/rewards. However any help any of you give would be greatly appreciated... Oh, I forgot one thing - we can afford to put a $10k down payment, so we'd actually be borrowing about $77k.
My advice is to suck it up and buy a cheap, fixer-upper home in an area that's being gentrified (sorry, couldn't think of a less offensive term). It won't be nearly as nice as the condo, but you'll be paying more for the land. Fix it up as money and time allows, and after the four or five years, you should have an easier time unloading it than a condo. It will also appreciate quicker so that when you do sell, you'll have a nice little nest egg for your next home. Remember: if you make the right purchase, appreciation in your home will usually build equity quicker than the principal portion of your monthly payments. Condo's can be hard to unload sometimes.
usually inner city neighborhoods that were run down to a degree, but are improving because yuppies are moving in and throwing around cash fixing up the old houses. The yuppies move in because these neighborhoods are usually close in to the center of the city.
