Homebuying
- 2007-02-25
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Since moving to Seattle just over a year ago, the pressure from friends and families about when I’m going to buy a place to live have gotten steadily stronger. A year ago, I was planning to buy around now, but now that now is here I’ve lost almost all interest in doing so.
There are really two parts to the housing equation for me. The first part has to do with where I am in my life–what I want to be spending my money and time on, how mobile I want to be, where I want to live geographically. The second part is the financial end–what can I afford, how much do I want to spend, what am I willing to sacrifice with regard to price/size/ammentities/location.
On the first part, a year ago I thought I would be ready by now, but these days I’m not so sure. I enjoy living where I do on Capitol Hill. As much as I hate the traffic between here and work, I still have zero interest in moving to the Eastside to be closer to work because that would seem to be quickest way to nuke my social life. At the same time, I worry about the changes occuring in this neighborhood. Will it still be a place I want to live in 5 or 10 years? What will happen to gay nightlife nearby once several major bars are closed or redeveloped in that time frame? Will I still personally be interested in the nightlife offered in a few years? Will my friends who live here still be here or will they have moved on as well? Will I want to live in a sterilized, yuppified higher elevation Belltown?
On the second part, it depresses me when I realize how little I can actually afford where I want to be. Realistically, I’d be looking at smallish to medium sized one bedroom condos. Moreover, I have a hard time justifying paying at least $2000+ per month (not including maintenance or utilities) to buy what I’m now renting for about $1200 per month (including maintenance and certain utilities).
Somewhat intertwined in both parts are the effects of paying more to own on what I want to do with my life right now. An additional $10K per year in housing costs (at least) pretty much would mean no more vacations to far off locations, way less going out and way less eating out.
Hanging over all this are what I consider dubious housing prices as demonstrated by graphs like this one. It just doesn’t seem like a good time to buy right now in Seattle. Maybe I’ll see how things are in a few months or years and re-evaluate both components again. For now, I’m just trying to be better with my money by saving more. We’ll see how that goes though…
One Comment
Well, you know, it’s your decision whether to buy or to rent - I’m in school now, but even when I wasn’t, I didn’t try to buy when doing so would mean risking going bankrupt or even cutting back on doing things that I wanted to do… and I don’t see any reason why you should do so…
However, having said that, I’m not sure I’d use that graph as an indicator of anything in particular except maybe the AVERAGE cost of a standard house ACROSS THE COUNTRY. First, you’re probably not going to buy the standard house (what is that, anyway, 3 BR, 3BA? or something smaller?). Second, as you know, the average can be misleading - Seattle’s probably more expensive generally, as we’ve discussed, but there might be pockets where it’s less so. Finally, I think Steve got his 3BR, 2.5BA (new construction) condo for less than similar (established) units in the area because it was the builder’s end-of-year cycle… so, third, similar or analogous conditions might apply if you look hard enough.
So it might be worth taking a look (if you haven’t already been) - then you can tell those “friends and family” that you HAVE looked and you simply can’t afford it (if you can’t), and that should take the pressure off…