Thinking of buying housing for wife who's going back to WSU (Seattle: apartments, rental)

[Scotty Dosent Know]

Hey everyone been a while since I have been on here but have a question!

Wife and I live in Seattle and have a house here. She is starting school at WSU this August to become a teacher and was originally going to stay with her parents who live in a very small town south of Cheney for a year or so until she can finish her schooling. She found out today that she may be in school for up to 3.5 more years because of what she wants to do (double major).

The drive from her parents house to WSU is about an hour which might be ok for a year but 3.5 years of living with her parents and 2hr drive every day is just to much. I want her to live by campus just for her safty/sanity/wear on cars and also so she can partake in school functions.

I am thinking of buying her a house or condo over there near WSU campus to live in for that time period. Something $150K or less. With $30K down monthly payments would be probably $700 or less. If she got a roommate or 2 that might cover the whole mortgage which would be nice. Is this a dumb idea? She is 28 and married so not about that dorm or renting a bedroom life. Would it be hard to sell later on down the road? If I kept it as a rental at WSU is this bad idea? (trashed by kids?)


Also I get work regularly in the spokane and tri cities area so would come out for 3-10 days at a time fairly often and a house would be nice over there.



Sorry for the long post!

[Scotty Dosent Know]

Also hopefully this is in the right section, I know Pullman is not exactly right next door to Spokane.

[Upthewazzu]

Did you ever find anything? I live in Pullman, and there really isn't anything that exists in your price range right next to campus. Best option, IMO, would be an apartment on the bus route.

[PS90]

Another option (maybe not a very high-class option) is to buy a single-wide mobile home in one of the many mobile home parks in town. Pullman is unique in the fact that the mobile home parks are generally slightly BETTER in terms of livability compared to apartments/dorms/houses downtown, because they are generally populated by grad students and vet students - who are often a little bit more "mature" than the average college student.

You buy the single-wide trailer and then pay a little bit of rent to the owner of the mobile home park to rent the space that the single-wide is parked on.

That's what I did. I remember my space rent being about $130 per month. I'm sure it's a lot higher now.

And it's usually easy to sell one, since there will always be older grad students looking to get away from the party kids.

Don't know if the OP has looked at this forum in a while, but good luck...