Trying to figure out what the best course of action is here...
We live in the highest COL city in the country (basically tied for first) and getting ahead and owning property is pretty damn impossible on 2 upper middle income salaries. Pretty much your entire salary goes to rent and the basics, and god forbid you don't have family for occasional childcare. There just isn't a way to save money when every penny is going towards just living. Moving to a lower COL area isn't an option at the moment, both because we love it here and because our jobs cannot travel.
So we have our name down on every city sponsored lottery (meaning you'd get a family size apartment for MUCH below cost)... but that can take a lifetime, and usually you'll never come up.
Honestly, every person we know who owns in this city either has a REALLY high paying job or their parents paid their down payment. We don't have either of those options.
To add another complication-- we are living in a great area now, but can only afford a 1BD here... we're needing another BD at this point as our son gets older, and my mother is having a really hard time living alone (disabled and recently widowed) and I know she'll need to be with us at least part-time.
My partner's parents have 3 apartments in this city and one of them is a 3 BD and very spacious and in a nice area. They want to rent it to us for a little while, then give it to us. When they give it to us we'd still have a $900/month maintenance, which is really NOTHING in this area. The apartment itself could probably sell for $650+, as is. If we renovate, in the future we could probably sell closer to $1 million if we ever needed to move.
Problem is it needs some work. It's technically livable, but we'd really love to make it *ours.* We don't know how to take out a big enough loan (at a low enough interest) to renovate without owning it and using a refinancing (though we wouldn't have a mortgage, not sure how that works either). We'd like to invest maybe $50K-$100K into it. Truthfully we haven't looked into it yet (have not had the time!) so I thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone knew how you'd go about that. (Construction loan?)
Paying back that loan plus the maint. would be a DREAM amount to pay per month for us. It would free us up to quickly pay back college/car debt and put more away into college/retirement. We also may need to pay for private school as the zone school in that area is not ok. (I'm a teacher in this city, so I know how to do gifted/talented testing and lotteries and magnet schools and such, so we may have options.) But at first we'd be renting (same as we pay now) and paying the loan.
To complicate things... one might say "why not just move in as is and don't start renovating until you own?" when our monthly expenses would go way down. Well... the apartment would be empty a good 5-6 months before we moved in and it would be just wonderful to use that time to renovate so we don't have to when we are living there with a baby and potentially a grandma (and we need some renovation to make it livable for her too, and I'd like that to be before this coming winter when she has the hardest time living alone). I'd love if I could find a way to make this an option.
Any advice? Not sure if I made everything clear. It's an amazing opportunity to stop living month to month and finally be invested in something!
We live in the highest COL city in the country (basically tied for first) and getting ahead and owning property is pretty damn impossible on 2 upper middle income salaries. Pretty much your entire salary goes to rent and the basics, and god forbid you don't have family for occasional childcare. There just isn't a way to save money when every penny is going towards just living. Moving to a lower COL area isn't an option at the moment, both because we love it here and because our jobs cannot travel.
So we have our name down on every city sponsored lottery (meaning you'd get a family size apartment for MUCH below cost)... but that can take a lifetime, and usually you'll never come up.
Honestly, every person we know who owns in this city either has a REALLY high paying job or their parents paid their down payment. We don't have either of those options.
To add another complication-- we are living in a great area now, but can only afford a 1BD here... we're needing another BD at this point as our son gets older, and my mother is having a really hard time living alone (disabled and recently widowed) and I know she'll need to be with us at least part-time.
My partner's parents have 3 apartments in this city and one of them is a 3 BD and very spacious and in a nice area. They want to rent it to us for a little while, then give it to us. When they give it to us we'd still have a $900/month maintenance, which is really NOTHING in this area. The apartment itself could probably sell for $650+, as is. If we renovate, in the future we could probably sell closer to $1 million if we ever needed to move.
Problem is it needs some work. It's technically livable, but we'd really love to make it *ours.* We don't know how to take out a big enough loan (at a low enough interest) to renovate without owning it and using a refinancing (though we wouldn't have a mortgage, not sure how that works either). We'd like to invest maybe $50K-$100K into it. Truthfully we haven't looked into it yet (have not had the time!) so I thought I'd throw it out there to see if anyone knew how you'd go about that. (Construction loan?)
Paying back that loan plus the maint. would be a DREAM amount to pay per month for us. It would free us up to quickly pay back college/car debt and put more away into college/retirement. We also may need to pay for private school as the zone school in that area is not ok. (I'm a teacher in this city, so I know how to do gifted/talented testing and lotteries and magnet schools and such, so we may have options.) But at first we'd be renting (same as we pay now) and paying the loan.
To complicate things... one might say "why not just move in as is and don't start renovating until you own?" when our monthly expenses would go way down. Well... the apartment would be empty a good 5-6 months before we moved in and it would be just wonderful to use that time to renovate so we don't have to when we are living there with a baby and potentially a grandma (and we need some renovation to make it livable for her too, and I'd like that to be before this coming winter when she has the hardest time living alone). I'd love if I could find a way to make this an option.
Any advice? Not sure if I made everything clear. It's an amazing opportunity to stop living month to month and finally be invested in something!
