Not sure what to do!

[briggsy's girl]

I honestly don't think being in a home of your own is the be all and end all that its made out to be. So really think through whether its what YOU want. Bugger everyone else and their opinion. It's what you and DP want to do. Both my brother and myself had it drilled into us that renting was dead money. You're paying someone else's mortgage. Blah blah blah. We both bought houses young. We are both now renting after selling our respective houses at a loss. It definitely cost us significantly more, both in money and in stress etc to buy and then sell. We bought at the middle of an upswing in house values in our town, where we had pretty much a guarantee of rental tenants from the local uni if we wanted to live elsewhere. Then the uni built more housing on campus, property prices plummeted, and our houses were on the market for months, to sell at a loss.

Do I regret buying when I did? No, not really. I learnt a lot through it. But I'm not in a hurry to go back now. I'm content paying my rent, being able to make a phone call when something isn't right and someone else bearing the cost of repairs. I am now living a lot closer to work, and paying less in rent than I was on the mortgage, as well as probably 80% less travel expenses. I know I'll be in my job long term. So eventually we may look at buying again. But I want my personal loan (covering what we lost on the sale of the house!) paid out first. I want to save for a few years so we can pay the biggest deposit possible. And I want to buy something that we are in love with. Not just something so we can say we have bought a house. And who knows. We may decide to keep renting and use those savings for something else like sending dd to a better school or taking her on a huge holiday. I'm not sure, when we die, if she will be more appreciative of a house with a heap of debt or the memories of what we could do with and for her growing up. I know I'd prefer to keep working part time and have dh home with dd than to have us both working full time to pay a mortgage...

Just do what is right fur you guys. Don't worry about the opinions if everyone else. Only you are living your life. Only you know what's right for you