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Originally Posted by KnockedUpButtercup  I was going to suggest another trailer, as well. Those things depreciate like CRAZY! You could probably find a used one for a very low amount...think about what you'd be willing to spend on rent for a couple of years and add that up to arrive at a figure you can work with.
I don't know where you live, but when I lived in southwest Louisiana I saw ads for used trailers for sale in the paper every week, for ridiculously low amounts...many of them just desperate for someone to take over the note.
Another option: have you thought about a good sized travel trailer? This is another item that depreciates insanely quickly, so used ones are available much more cheaply than new ones. You could live in it now, take it with you when you move out of state to live in while looking for a home to buy, and use it for vacations once you're in a permanent home. My in-laws did this, and their trailer was one of the bigger ones...it was a "5th wheel" type of trailer, I believe. (They sold it and bought a smaller one for traveling, once they were settled in.)
Good luck finding a solution!
Holly
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That is what I was going to say. I'd just look at buying another trailer and then taking it with you when you move.
We just sold our house--I bought it in 2002 and then the real estate market went CRAZY and the value increased tremendously. (like, it didn't quite double in value but almost.) And I had a lot of equity in it already. And it was in a good area, a popular area, and the second buyer who saw it made an offer after just 4 days on the market. So in many ways, it would seem like I should have made out like a bandit. Well let me tell ya, after several thousand dollars worth of repairs/upgrades before putting it on the market and then fixing little stuff that was not up to code (which had changed since *I* bought the house just a few years before!), getting slammed on the appraisal and having to go down many thousands of dollars in our price because of that, paying a ton of money in real estate commissions plus several other thousand dollars in closing costs--that huge amount of equity got whittled down really, really fast. And I'd had a good situation where the house had appreciated enough in value *and* I started out with a lot of equity, so I was even in a position to take a lower price if need to be and still get my money out of it. Building or buying is not inherently frugal or a good investment of resources, especially because there is a huge amount of cost just involved in transfering real estate, either as a buyer or a seller (as in closing costs, title fees, title insurance, private mortgage insurance, mortgage fees, and on and on and on--even if you "for sale by owner" you will still have costs--for instance I found out that in the state we lived in the seller by law pays the title insurance--well, that was thousands of dollars.) No *WAY* would I be thinking about either buying or building a house that I was not going to be in for at least 5-7 years or longer. I think three years really should be the minimum to consider. Even if you could get all house labor for free, materials are still really expensive and to build something that is an improvement is going to be more expensive--especially if you have to buy land. Building or buying are both very expensive propositions--lots of permits and legal details to consider. I would much more happily rent for a couple of years, you are not "throwing money" away at all, you are exchanging it for a nice place to live. Heck, you could be in a really nice apartment for a couple of years for the same amount of money you'd probably *lose* in selling a house you hadn't lived in for very long.
While we were looking at houses when we were moving, we saw one house that was bought by a younger couple who looked (from their wedding photos, college diplomas and other assorted memorabilia they had around their house) to be just out of school, fairly newly married and starting their careers. Well, they had bought the house in September--in April when we saw their house, the husband had gotten a job in another state and they were moving. They'd put a contingency contract on a house in the new state and then went ahead with that contract because they got an offer on their house. That deal fell through, and they were now stuck with two mortgages, and the wife finishing her job as a teacher here in this state while the husband went to the new state and the new house to start his job. We did some research and it turns out the house was originally listed for $270,000, and then they had reduced the price to $249,000--well, they had just bought the house for $224,000, eight months previously and had bought lots of nice Pottery Barn furniture but hadn't made any improvements to the house! They were just trying to mark it up to break even and cover their costs of selling too fast before the house had a chance to increase in value much. (in an area where annual real estate appreciation is between 2-4 percent annually.) I felt really bad for them, because there was no way they were going to get out of that house without losing money--even if some sucker is foolish enough to buy a house that is waaaay overpriced based on comparable properties etc., there is no way a mortgage company is going to lend somebody money when they are planning on paying over the appraised price for the house (which is a new development in real estate) and appraisals are more and more conservative (because appraisers have been sued for over-valuing houses, then the person goes belly-up and can't afford the house, and then the bank can't get the $ out of it and blames the appraiser.) I really learned a lot about real estate when selling/buying this time, and it's a different and tougher market than it was even a few years before!
Also, you might consider too that if you sell a house before living in it for two years, you may be subject to capital gains taxes on any equity you did have, unless you roll that into a 1031 tax exchange. (Same thing with if you rent out a house to someone else--let's say that you own a house and you live in it and you sell it. You get to keep any equity from that house tax-free. If you rent it out and have another primary residence and you itemize the expenses you have on that house versus the income you make on it and you depreciate it, you will then end up paying capital gains taxes on the equity you get when you turn around and sell it, unless you put that money in a 1031 tax exchange and go shopping for another rental. It may put you in a position of either losing a lot of equity, or being a perpetual landlord.)
Edited to add: I don't want to imply that I think buying a house is always a bad idea--in our case it actually did work out fairly well, we made some money on the sale even after all the costs, and we have purchased a house in our new location. However, we were lucky because we bought before a huge market boom and sold after it, and we owned the house long enough to have the costs of buying and selling averaged over almost five years and balanced out by appreciation over time. Real estate usually takes time to appreciate in value, and for the time frame of 1-2 years, I just don't think it's enough time that you'll be in the house to make all the start-up costs worth it in most cases unless you are extremely knowledgable as a real estate investor, or just exceptionally lucky. Example, if you spend 10,000 on a down payment on a 100,000 house, and then you sell in two years, assuming your property increases in value at a rate of 3% annually, (which is not a given, either, especially in the current real estate market in many places) and then at the end of the two years your property will have increased only enough to pay a realtor their 6% commission, and you will have been paying a lot of interest and not a lot of principal on a mortgage, so you are really going to have to be sure that you will be able to sell the house for at least 6 percent more than you bought it for just to pay off the mortgage, pay commission and closing costs and break even, and you won't have made any money and may in fact be in a more precarious situation to buy in another location because your money for your down payment is tied up in the current house. You may even find yourself losing money on the house and ending up in a financial pickle, especially if you need to sell quickly, let's say that your DH finds a job in another state and you have to move within a month or two. I'd sooner just put the money in a high interest savings account (you can get 4-5 percent on that amount of money these days in a savings account) and just deal with things and plan for the future, or purchase something better but portable that I could live with for a few years after we moved.
