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As one of those evil Californians -- albeit not one who moved to your state -- my philosophy has always been to purchase with an eye to on-going expenses. Property taxes are going to dog you, and they're inescapable. Your friends were smart to purchase less house.
I bought my first home recently in a gentrifying/gentrified area in Houston. I am a single man without kids who makes about $200k/yr gross. I didn’t want to buy a condo because I thought that an old bungalow SFH would appreciate faster and I wanted to buy before the nasty Californians come and make this new home unaffordable for native Texans like me. I put a sizable down payment (45% of the cost) and now pay about $1,300 in monthly loan costs and another $1,200 in extortionary taxes and insurance. I still have about $550k remaining in cash. When I compare my property to others who are my age (friends, acquaintances), I am noticing that they bought less expensive properties, some of those with 2 incomes vs my 1. I’ll admit that certain monthly expenses are higher than what I’d like ($310 electric bill, $84 util bill) and I feel pressure to reduce them. Maybe it’s the way that I was raised? I kind of feel like I should have bought a cheaper home, but have more $$ to blow on fancy vacations. I’m not materialistic in the slightest and feel like I have what I want. Fancy cars don’t interest me at all. My thought was to get home ownership out of the way while I deemed still “affordable”. Of course, I would have been better off if I had bought much earlier, but “coulda, woulda, shoulda”- can’t cry over spilt milk.
You bought less than you could afford which is good and people should not buy as much as they can afford unless all they can afford is a lower priced starter home at their max budget.
Well we wanted to live in a particular neighborhood and have a house and lot of a certain size. And we had to pay to get it. Where I live is very important to me, so I have no qualms spending what needs to be spent to live in a nice area, with good schools. Others have different priorities. Don't really care about fancy vacations either. If you have what you want, then that should suffice dontya think?
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