Our Dream House

During the negotiation process on Sunday, my wife turns to me and says “Did you ever think in your wildest dreams we would be spending $335,000 on a house before we’re 30″? The answer to that question was simple. No.

When we got married we were paying $800/mo. in rent on a 2 bedroom apartment. After Adeline was born the budget got tight but we knew we couldn’t climb three flights of stairs everyday. It was obvious we needed to buy a house.

I honestly didn’t think we could afford it. Stephanie had quit work to care for Adeline, so we were living off a single income. After reviewing our budget and looking at real estate in Orlando we found we could afford a $150,000 house. What was crazy is our payment only went up $90/mo. This is probably the smartest decision we made in our 5 years of marriage. 6 months later we moved in and were expecting another kid. The real estate market in Orlando exploded and our house nearly doubled in value in 2 years. With 2 kids and only 3 bedrooms we felt moving to a bigger house would be a good investment.

We ended up moving further out of Orlando to get a bigger house for less money. Turned out this tactic would net a huge return. We bought a house double the size of our first house for only $226,000. The verdict is still out just how much we’ll make, but its listed at over $300,000.

The real estate market here in the metro Charlotte area didn’t see the explosion that we did in Orlando. They have been steadily rising about 8% a year. Turns out we can get a little bit nicer home here in the Carolinas than we had in Orlando. If this stays true of the next several years we’ll be in this house for a long time. Which is good for us, since this is our dream house. Its has 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, and about 3100 sq. ft. We both had features that we wanted and we got everything and more.

The moral to the story is your dreams aren’t as far off as you think. If you’re paying rent there is a good chance you could afford a home. You may have to sacrifice some things but as you can see the payoff is huge. Remember real estate is nothing more than an investment. There aren’t to many places you can put your money that will return 8%.