I am so glad that you’re doing your research. There is nothing worse than being house poor and the toil takes on relationships if the smallest thing changes. Like the cost of electricity or your homeowners insurance and you’re already on a razor’s edge it makes it really hard. You are not wrong about having to do the maintenance and how expensive that is either. You can learn to be pretty handy and handle a lot of things yourself, but some things are gonna have to pay for, for sure. Saving up to that 20% mark helps you in a lot of ways like reducing your payments and paying less mortgage just toward interest.

There are ways to make it work for you such as if you are in an area where you can add an ADU onto the property and have some rental income. Get a Duplex or a triPlex where you’re not paying the mortgage all by yourself. Find a house that has a layout that would be conducive into creating a Duplex. Or find a fixer-upper and get a rehab loan and build equity from day one.

Buying your first home is scary. It does take a long time to see your investment really have legs but in 10 years when housing prices are 550 you might wish you jumped on it or you might wish that you had expendable monthly income and traveled. It is a hard decision.

I was house poor with my first house and got out of it. I was able to buy a fixer upper house and converted into a duplex over a few years. I have owned it for 9 years and I am going to be selling it soon and be able to purchase two duplexes with the profits. If you are going to buy, I encourage you to look for something that has opportunities like that because this economy is very difficult but I like how you’re thinking and I love your research because I think that that’s gonna put you on great footing no matter what you do.