How old were you when you purchased your first home?

[Pea-n-Me]

A down payment alone 20% is at least $160,000 here. I love it here, but it's no way we can get a house anytime in the next 6 years.

Is it possible to put down less than 20%? What about looking at condos or something a little farther out in suburbia? Get into something however you can and start building some equity since presumably you're paying rent anyway. Be creative - how about buying a house with a group of people?

When we were your age we were watching prices rise astronomically here in MA. Being in college it was hard to scrape together the rent let alone a downpayment. Sometimes I wonder if we should have tried harder. My best friend bought her house for 80K in 1986; we waited until 1989 and prices had doubled. Even in 1989 it was a stretch for us to buy but we followed the advice of a wise person who told us to "Beg, Borrow or Steal" to get into a house - which we did with 5% down (borrowed from family) and interest rates at 11.5%. We're still in that same house but have refinanced several times and reduced the term of the mortgage, etc.. The house has tripled in value from when we bought it so it was definitely a wise move to buy when we did. We're about to tap into the equity to do some major renovations since we like the house and location, and buying something new here now wouldn't be worth it to us since new homes are well into the range you're talking about in your area.

When my sister and her husband lived in LA they bought a little shack three houses away from the freeway, LOL, which was all they could afford despite their advanced degrees and high powered jobs. It was also a wise move because they sold it, moved away and with the profits bought a great big house in another state.

Best of luck to you!

 

[D L and K's Mom]

Dh and I were 24. We bought a raised ranch in Hamlin NY(lovely decor......brown, avacado green and orange shag carpets!!! ) for $62.000. We loved it even thought the colors were hidious. We loved it beacause it was ours!!! We slowly redecorated and when we were all done.....we MOVED!!!! hee hee (this was 16 years ago)

 

[CBoysMomLovesDisney]

DH and I were 25 & just married (1992). 2 Bdrm Townhouse in the Chicago burbs for $125.000.

 

[Galahad]

One reason we love where we live:

Indy ranks No. 1 for affordable housing
90% of homes sold this summer were affordable to families earning median income of $64,000
By Erika D. Smith
erika.smith@indystar.com

Indianapolis might not have the swanky shops of Beverly Hills or the mountain peaks of Denver.
But it has something no other city can claim: the most affordable housing of any big city in the nation.
When it comes to low housing prices in cities with more than 500,000 people, Indianapolis is No. 1, according to a report issued Thursday by the National Association of Home Builders.
From July to September, 90 percent of the homes sold in the city were affordable to families pulling in a median income of $64,000. That goes for existing and new houses.
The median price for those homes was $125,000.
All of that sounds about right to Rick Bergman, a real estate agent in Indianapolis for more than a decade.
"It seems to be a general consensus that people come here and they like our housing prices," said Bergman, who works for Carpenter Realtors.
Historically, the city has been one of the most affordable major metropolitan areas in the country, said Jim Litten, president of the residential real estate service division of F.C. Tucker.
The lack of geographic boundaries is a big reason for that, he said.
There are no mountains or oceans to limit growth, he said. The possibility for building homes in Indiana is endless, unlike Colorado or California.
"The shock is if you come to Indianapolis from San Francisco, you can't imagine the kind of buying power you'd have," Litten said. "Conversely, if you go from Indianapolis to San Francisco, you're in for a shock."
Indeed, at the other end of the affordability spectrum, there's California.
In those three months, the California megalopolis of Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale sold homes that were affordable to 2.4 percent of the population.
The median income there was $54,500, while the median home price was $495,000.
Rounding out the list of unaffordable locales: Santa Ana-Anaheim-Irvine, Calif.; San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, Calif.; Stockton, Calif.; and New York-White Plains, N.Y., and Wayne, N.J.
Behind Indianapolis, metro areas with the most affordable housing included the northeast Ohio metro area of Youngstown-Warren-Boardman; Detroit-Litonia-Dearborn, Mich.; Buffalo-Niagara Falls, N.Y.; and Oklahoma City.

Copyright 2005 IndyStar.com. All rights reserved

 

[MomofKatie]

I was 30, DH was 29. We bought a single family 2100 sq ft home in a suburb of Birmingham, AL for $120,000. We had that house for just over 2 years, then DH got transferred to Columbus, OH. We got a house there for $10,000 more, but it was smaller and the property taxes were more. Now, we are in NC, and paid $135,000 5 years ago for the house we have now. It is a single family 2 story with around 1900 sq ft. We like it very much- just thr right size for the 3 of us.

 

[chrissyk]

I can't believe how affordable some of the houses are that you guys have purchased. A down payment alone 20% is at least $160,000 here. I love it here, but it's no way we can get a house anytime in the next 6 years.

You don't need to put 20% down. I can tell you that we didn't put anything near that down on our 1st house. I think that we scraped together 5% down on that house, and now people routinely do 3% down and even nothing down. I am SO glad that we scraped together that downpayment (believe me, it wasn't fun at the time). We lived in MA, and we bought 2 months before the incredible housing run-up started. It was dumb luck. If we hadn't bought when we did, we NEVER would have gotten into a house there, and our life would have been very different right now.

 

[becka]

We purchased our first house right before DS was born. I was 26 and DH was 27. We paid a little over $111,000 for a almost 1600 sq. ft. 3 bedroom, 2 bath, 2 car garage.

 

[SamRoc]

I was 25 my dh was 27 when we bought our first home in Brooklyn in 1983 for $64,000. We gutted it, made it the way we wanted it, had our son, then sold it in 1986 for $130,000.

 

[drakethib]

I can't believe how affordable some of the houses are that you guys have purchased. A down payment alone 20% is at least $160,000 here. I love it here, but it's no way we can get a house anytime in the next 6 years.

$160,000 for a down payment !!!! I am about to faint.

Wow I heard Cali was expensive but I had no idea.

Are salaries generally much higher in Cali? Please I am not trying to be nosey but I am a Cost Analyst for a Refinery and my wife is an Engineer for a Chemcial Plant which are pretty good jobs here in Texas but there is no way we could afford a 800K home and live with the frills that we have now eben if we had a 30 year mortgage.

 

[MagicKingdom05]

I was 30 years old (2 years ago) spent $128,000 and it was a condo.

 

[Rozzie]

1999------ paid $86,500 for a 3/2 1600 sq ft. rancher in Pensacola, FL.

I was 25 and DH was 27. Just sold it last year and was blown away about the profit. I agree with the saying "beg, borrow, steal" to get into a house. The market has only increased in most areas.

But then again, where you live, well it would be apartment city for us. There is no way we could afford something like that.

 

[dismom9761]

We bought our first house one week after I turned 20 yrs old and my DH was 26 yrs old.It was a 1,000 sq foot house,3 bdm 1 bth for 62,500.we lived there until last November.Our "starter" home lasted us 10 years and saw the birth of four children.

 

[goodeats]

$160,000 for a down payment !!!! I am about to faint.

Wow I heard Cali was expensive but I had no idea.

Are salaries generally much higher in Cali? Please I am not trying to be nosey but I am a Cost Analyst for a Refinery and my wife is an Engineer for a Chemcial Plant which are pretty good jobs here in Texas but there is no way we could afford a 800K home and live with the frills that we have now eben if we had a 30 year mortgage.

Unfortunately I don't think salaries are *that* much higher. One of the big companies here is moving to Nashville, and there was a write up in the paper that said average home prices in SoCal were ~$500K and in Nashville they were ~$250K, average salaries in SoCal were ~$65K, but in Nashville were ~$55K. So not that much to make a huge difference. And of course in SoCal we're paying higher taxes since the Feds don't take COL into account on income.

Personally if my DH's company was going to move to Nashville (or another lower COL area) and pay for the moving and closing costs, I'd go in a heartbeat.

To answer the OP, we're 27 and are currently in escrow on our first place. It's a 4-plex building in a not so great area. We'll live in one unit for a bit while renting out the other 3. We're hoping to hold onto it for a long time while buying our real house by the time we have kids.

You have to get creative in California, unless you're a lawyer or a doctor or something.

 

[Zurealsoon]

We were 30, house cost $70k....sold it 2 years later for $90k...it was a lonnnng time ago.

 

[DisneyPhD]

I was 21 and my DH was 23. We lived in Southern Michigan at the time (1986). It was a 100+ yr old home with 4 bedrooms and 2 full baths for only $28,000 BUT interest rates back then were about 14%!!

I wonder how much that house would be worth now a days. Where in Southren MI because I can't imagine a house that size for that price, even in 1986.

We were 28 years old. (6 years ago.) The house was 1300 SF and cost just over 150,000. It is now 1800 sf, almost everything about it is redune (windows sidding, finished basemnt, new deck, ) and is worth well over twice that.

 

[gshanny]

I was 24. We bought a big 4 bedroom house. It was close to 100 years old though and needed updating. We paid $33,900 for it. That was in 1993 and we live in Kansas. We sold it almost a year ago for $97,000. We had redone almost every room. The kitchen, the most expensive, had not been redone and unless the new owners did soemthing it still only has 2 electric outlets in it, poor peeps.

 

[eeyoreiscool]

We were 28 for our first home. It was a little over 100k at the time.

 

[SeeDisney]

I was 33.

Husband was in the Navy so we were in apts until he retired.

Bought a beautiful one acre lot house in 1999 for 200K in Delaware.

It's double the value since then.

 

[Pollito916]

We just bought our first place in September! I am 24, it is a townhouse, and it was about $210K.

 

[DisneyPhD]

About SoCal. My friend's brother lives there. He is a computer genius. Was making well over 6 digits before he was 30 years old. His wife worked for the same company and had a good job too.

They bought a house for just over a million, and it is the same size as my house in suburan Det (not a cheap area to live, but not bad comparied to SoCal and DC.) So we paid 165,000 for a house, they paid a million for roughly the same thing. (both in near neighborhoods, good schools etc...) I shuder to think what their house is worth 6 years later.

I hear they have a hard time beause teachers can't aford to live were they teach. That is sad. I hate snow but there is something to be said for MI sometimes. However having said that if I ever move it will be South. Never going more north then were I am.