Young couple - Buy or rent?

gary the great

My GF and I are 23 and 22 and want to move out of our parents houses.
We have a salary of 55k before tax between us and we dont know whether we should buy or just rent for a while.
We would rather live in an apartment but with plans for kids in the future a 3-bed house is more suitable and even cheaper than buying an apartment.

Any advice anyone can give, ive read that thread about the proerty market in finance section of boards and its making me think that maybe I should leave buying?

After research I found renting a 1-bed apartment in Dublin 24(were we live) is about 950 a month, but we could get a 3 bed in a crap area of D.24 for about 300k with mortgage repayments of about 1300 a month, it must be worth forking the extra cash out for? We dont really want to rent out any rooms in the house as we want the place to ourselves.

Or is affordable housing another option for us? Any advice would be great.

Actually reading back over my post makes me realise that maybe buying is the best option, if we can get a mortgage cos I know the banks are tightening the strings and intrest rates etc.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that although between us we would only have about 6k saved up, im due at least 70k in 2 years time. Im sure this would further the case to buy...

aniascor

Have you lived together before? If not, then I think renting would be the way to go for at least a year to see how you get on.

You're both young, so it's not going to make too much difference to you whether you buy now or buy in a year or two, unless you want to start a family sooner than that.

Buying a place together is a huge step, and rather than seeing renting as "dead money", why don't you look at it as a trial run, during which you can save the extra €400 a month that you'll have from paying rent instead of a mortgage, and you'll have that to put towards the down-payment later on?

It all depends on what your reasons are for wanting to buy - whether it is financially-driven or driven by a desire to make a firm commitment to each other. Only you can decide what's right for you.

whizzbang

I'm not sure it is a great time to buy, you might want to have a look at this thread on askaboutmoney.com Housing market

Besides that you might want to see how comfortably you can repay the mortgage if the interest rates go up by 1% (quitelikely in the next year) or 2% (likely in the longer term).

aonfocaleile

The great thing about renting is the flexibility - would you have to stay in the Dublin 24 area if you decided to rent? Maybe it would be a good opportunity to live in another part of the city for a while. You should definitely postpone the plan to buy a property for the moment. Rent a one bed for a a year and make sure you can live together without too much hassle. You'll have your "own" place without all of the responsibility that goes with actually owning the place which should be great. I wouldn't rush into buying buying a property in a "crap" area - remember you'll have to live there for a long time. There are other issues to consider other than affordability - facilites, quality of life, commute time, future value of house etc etc. In the mean time, put your names on the affordable housing lists - you might be lucky. (And don't just contact your own local authority (SDCC if you live in D24) - put your name on the city councils list as well and maybe the Dublin Docklands authority - keep your options open)

gary the great

[QUOTE In the mean time, put your names on the affordable housing lists - you might be lucky. (And don't just contact your own local authority (SDCC if you live in D24) - put your name on the city councils list as well and maybe the Dublin Docklands authority - keep your options open)[/QUOTE]

Ye buying is a major step, maybe renting would be good for the first year and then see where we are next year, but in the meantime i think we'll put our names down on the affordable housing list and see what happens.

Thnaks for the advice

Idleater

aniascor wrote:

Have you lived together before? If not, then I think renting would be the way to go for at least a year to see how you get on.

Best advice on here.

No matter how long you have known the other person and/or been going out together, living together is a very big step. Try it renting first to make sure you can live together, pay the bills, get a feel for what it is like to have someone hanging around under your feet etc etc.

If you do buy, and something does go wrong in the relationship (which noone wishes on anyone), then it gets very messy very quickly and at 22/23 years old you want to be best prepared so such eventualities do not occur.

L.