How old were you when you bought your first home? - Page 3

[OvenSeeksBun]

I was 22 and DH was 24. April 1st it will be 4 years since we purchased the house.

[beansmama]

I was 19, married (to my now xh) and the sole provider. I bought through rural housing...a no down payment, 38 year subsidized mortgage. Yikes! I loved my house, but sold after a couple years. This time around me and Dh are planning on saving a substantion downpayment before buying...and no 38 year mortgages, lol!

[Sourire]

I was 26, DH was 29. First we bought a condo, now we have upgraded to a 3-bedroom townhouse with a yard and we plan to upgrade again in 10-15 years to a larger single-family house.

DH and I both have good incomes but since we are not interested in living in the suburbs we could not afford to buy our forever house right off the bat! However the process of upgrading step by step has really worked well for us so far, we made an excellent return on our condo (much better return than our other savings which we invested and lost a bunch of money on due to the recession).

[Ragana]

Early 40s here & no house. In our 20s we did school and international travel/living. In our 30s kids & more school. We're in a location where a halfway (and then only halfway!) decent place would be 3-4x our annual income (the rule of thumb used to be no more than 1.5x or 2x) and take up 50% of our take-home pay. No thanks! Needless to say we are renting for the foreseeable future.

[Flower of Bliss]

We were both 23, married 4 years, out of school, starting careers, no kids.

[MisaGoat]

We were 27 with one child, I became pregnant with our second during the process of buying the house. 

We were the second couple to buy a home out of our friends. One couple had a child and bought a couple years before us and bought a townhouse. The other couple wasn't yet married when they bought and bought 3 bedroom house. Both those couples were living with their parents immediately before purchasing to save money. 

[Bokonon]

We closed on our first house a week after I turned 26.  We had no kids at the time and had been married for 4.5 years.  We are currently renting because we sold our house before the bubble burst, and may buy again next year, but I have been very comfortable renting for the past 4 years.

[Sol_y_Paz]

Mid 20's

[skreader]

I was in my early 30s

[VocalMinority]

29

Now I have gone back and actually read your post.  It sounds less like you want a survey on when to buy a house and more like you want to be reassured that you haven't screwed up your life and gotten way off-track.  Be reassured!  Of course when you have kids young - and especially when you decide to stay home with them - you are putting yourself on a different financial, educational and career track than old friends, who go through life the way you probably once expected you would:  college, career, marriage, home, kids.  In that order.  Of course aspects of your track are harder!  But now that you have the kids,  you can't go back and wish you didn't have them, right?  Now that you decided to stay home and raise them yourself while they're young, you know you're doing the right thing, don't you?  They belong to you, not to anyone you might hire to care for them while you tried to catch up with the education/work/pursuit of wealth that you might be engaged in at 26, if you didn't have them.  They will only be young once.  You can't go back and have this time with them, ever again.

So thank God (I'm serious, I don't mean that as just a figure of speech) that you're still with their father (sorry, I don't remember whether or not you said you're married).  Statistically, it's almost a given that you two would have broken up by now, after having kids at 18.  And thank God you have a parent who's willing and able to provide a home for all of you, and who doesn't drive you completely crazy.  Many moms in your shoes have to put their kids in full-time daycare, so they can work to feed them and provide any kind of sub-standard apartment.

Your own interior decorating and the right kind of yard will be great, when you can have them.  They'll be especially great, because you waited and planned and saved for them.  But your priorities are in the right place, right now.  No one is keeping score, about when you achieve milestones in your life.  (Or, anyone who sounds like they're keeping score, you should quit hanging around with!)

Edited by VocalMinority - 3/15/11 at 3:45am

[honeybunmom]

Bought a condo at 28 and single.  One year out of law school.  Bought my second home at 34, one year after getting married and before we had our kids.  We just moved into it last year, 6 years after buying it.  And the rehabbing continues.

[CookiePie]

I was 26 & DH was 29.  We had a very similar situation as OP.  I had DD 1 at 18 & we paid my parents $300/month rent for a tiny apartment above them.  I can't say it has been easy though.  Much better since I started working part time once both kids were in school!  I agree about the priorities.  It will all happen as it should!

[Kellyh_01]

I'm 37, DH is 43, married for 19 years, and we are buying our first home now.  We are supposed to close escrow next Friday.  

[artemis33]

31, same year we got married.

[beebalmmama]

Me 22 and dh 39. We were lucky and bought a little house while we finished up school. We didn't realize we were in the middle of a housing boom. So luckily after graduation we sold it and made a little profit to pay off all those loans.

Now we have two kidsand have moved around a bit and I've been SAHMing off and on (ak: tight on money). Hoping to buy our second house this summer!

[applecider]

I was 29 and DP was 28.

[USAmma]

I was 24 and dh was 26 we built a brand new home ourselves. We were both working full time, no kids yet, no debt and new college grads in good jobs (when the economy was great still). :-) We had meant this to be our starter home to rent out eventually, but we really love it the home even though it's smallish. It's simpler this way.

[MujerMamaMismo]

At 30 & 32, DP and I are still at least 5 years away, and more like 10 years from buying a home. We spent a long time at uni and travelling in our 20's and then launched into babymaking not long into our careers. Plus we live in a very high COL area and neither of us have a great earning capacity. Most of our friends have now bought houses but they're either childless by choice or had A LOT of help from parents. Nonetheless I get very depressed about not owning a home - not because of the ownership aspect but because renting is very insecure here and it's rare to be able to stay in a place for more than a year or 2....not to mention that rent is super expensive and we have friends who bought 5 years ago who are paying less on their mortgages than we are on rent!

[kanga1622]

I was 27, DH was 29. We went through a 2 year period where DH had only a part-time job so we waited. In actuality, we were able to pay off all other debt before buying so it worked out wonderfully for us.

[Knittin' in the Shade]

We had our first child in 1999, when I was 22 and DH was 24.  We quickly had two more (in 01 and 03) and bought our first house in spring of '04, when I was 27 and DH was 29, then had baby #4 in 2006 :)  We were the youngest of my friends to buy a house (because virtually all of my friends from hs and college were all living the single life in NYC) but were just about the middle of the pack for DH's friends and our "couple" friends.