How does one afford a house in the Bay Area?
As if we didn’t have enough stress already, now we’re having to consider where we’re going to live after we’re married. Currently, I live with my sister in San Francisco and Andrea lives with her parents in a nearby city. My lease ends this Summer, and my sister would either have to find a new housemate or move out before the Fall semester starts. Andrea and I have to find a place to live sometime in August, and I will live there until we’re married.
We would like to ideally buy a home, as we both do not want to “throw away” money paying someone else’s mortage. But with the high cost of houses, above $700,000, we would need somewhere between $120,000 to $140,000 (20% of the total cost) for a down payment so we wouldn’t have to pay the PMI (private mortage insurance). At the moment, we don’t even have half of that…
Plus another reason we want a house is so that our little girl, Stripes, will have a playground. She may be raised as an in-door kitty, but she loves to go outside. If we rent an apartment, we will be too afraid of her getting lost, run over, stolen, etc. but at the same time, we don’t want to leave her with Andrea’s parents either since she requires a quite a bit of attention.
On the bright side, since we are first-time homeowners, we qualify for incentives and tax breaks, which should help, but it still comes down to the downpayment.
The other thing also is that if we do come up with the downpayment and manage to get a house, our monthly mortgage will eat up whatever money we have left from our paychecks. That means we wouldn’t be able to buy luxury items, go out, take trips, etc.
It’s really depressing when you think about all the sacrafices to own a home. Makes you wonder why you didn’t buy a home sooner? Well I dunno, at this moment, looks like we’re probably going to have to rent for awhile until we can build up enough savings for the downpayment. It’s funny too, it’s a buyer’s market right now, but yet the prices still seem high.
